Review by Booklist Review
Bruce Murray and Josefine Lobnik were a real couple who met during the Nazi occupation of the city of Maribor in what is now Slovenia, who married after the war and eventually settled in New Zealand in 1949. They first encountered each other in 1942; Lobnik was being held in a stalag, suspected of working with the Resistance. She passed a note through a fence to Murray seeking help locating her missing brother. From then on, their lives were intertwined in an unlikely romance that could happen only during darkest wartime. Gold has compiled a somewhat fictionalized account of their love story, their remarkable survival against formidable odds, and their happy ending after the war. Gold spends a lot of time contextualizing the couple's lives prior to their meeting, and how the war impacted their lives before Lobnik passed Murray that fateful note. Those historical sections can be tough slogging, but, despite that, this is an inspiring story of how love can survive the most horrific adversities and the most tragic of circumstances.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Radio broadcaster Gold (Fun Is a Serious Business) delivers a cinematic account of an unlikely romance that blossomed in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. In 1942, Josefine Lobnik passed a note to New Zealand prisoner of war Bruce Murray through the barbed wire of a prison camp outside Maribor, Slovenia. The message asked Bruce to look for Josefine's missing brother, Leopold, whom she feared had been captured by the Nazis. All four Lobnik siblings were partisan fighters; 18-year-old Josefine smuggled documents and helped fugitive POWs. Though Bruce determined that Leopold wasn't in the camp, he couldn't get a reply message to Josefine. A year later, their paths crossed again at the farm of Josefine's cousin in Radkersburg, Austria, where Bruce had been sent on a work detail. Their connection deepened, and in April 1945, Josefine helped Bruce escape from the Nazis and join the Soviet forces invading Radkersbug. After the war, Bruce and Josefine married and settled in New Zealand, where they raised three children. Gold--who admits to taking liberties with the timeline and some character details--sets a brisk pace and vividly describes the landscape of war-torn Europe. This WWII love story enthralls. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A retired broadcaster narrates the remarkable World War II romance between a Slovene resistance fighter and an Allied soldier from New Zealand. In his second book, Gold brings to life the events that brought together the man, Bruce Murray, and woman, Josefine Lobnik, who would become his father- and mother-in-law. His account reads much like a work of fiction. "Where the fundamental facts are known but the corroborating details uncertain," he writes, "I have at times created circumstances to fit those facts and, where necessary, I have created events as they imagined them to be." Even though the author deploys plenty of "dramatic license," he provides two engaging, intertwining tales, each of which focuses on one of the two protagonists. The first follows Bruce, who left Wellington in 1940 to fight for Britain in the war. The second thread follows Josefine, a Slovene patriot who ran documents between partisan groups in Nazi-occupied Slovenia. The two first "met" in 1942 when Josefine, disguised as an old woman, slipped a note to Bruce, then interned at the Maribor POW camp in Slovenia, through the wire fence that enclosed the facility. Her aim was to discover information about her brother, a high-profile Slovene partisan. The two met again in 1943, when Bruce, a "serial [prison camp] escaper," was transferred to a work camp in the same Austrian town where Josefine had gone into hiding. Gold joins their two narratives at this point in the book, celebrating the love story that gradually emerged from their second encounter. Over the next few years, their love was tested by the dangerous missions they undertook together, separation, Josefine's meddling relatives, and the many uncertainties of war. Well-researched and pieced together, the book will appeal to fans of wartime love stories and resistance tales in general. A memorable and uplifting work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
