A Review – “Skeletons at the Feast” by Chris Bohjalian

Skeletons at the Feast

By Chris Bohjalian

Shaye Areheart Books, 2008

This is an extraordinarily well-written novel in which history, romance, prejudice, and the horror of war all intersect in the lives of a German family, along with a few others who have found their world upended just before the close of World War II. In his 11th novel, author Chris Bohjalian provides a stunning and powerful portrait of the Eastern Front of Germany at a time when the Nazi state was about to collapse. German resident citizens, left without support or protection, are forced to flee westward away from the rapidly advancing Russian army.

Bohjalian concentrates his epic tale on close-up scenes in order to portray how the war and the morally bankrupt policies of the Third Reich have affected the lives of ordinary people. In doing so he has written an incredible tale that is a work of high literary art as well as being an absolutely magnificent read. This outstanding novel resembles a Vermeer portrait with each small nuance of character and daily life examined under a magnifying glass. It manages at the same time to be a vast sweeping saga as well as being an intimate portrait.

The final days before the fall of the Third Reich are viewed from the perspective of three very different groups of people: a German aristocratic family who are nominally members of the Nazi Party, a German Jewish man who has escaped from a cattle car on the way to Auschwitz, and female French Jewish prisoners horribly mistreated while serving as slave labor in German munitions factories.

War is soon history and momentous battles quickly become dry statistics. The picture is just too big for anyone to absorb it all, especially for a war as massive in scope as World War II. What can be much more effective is to show a portrait of the vast drama of warfare reduced to its simplest terms by evidencing how it affects the lives of the civilian noncombatants. While the armies and the battles may be distant, the dramatic and often tragic effects of war can indeed be very close up.

Not a single battle is discussed in this monumental epic. What are examined are the traumatic scenes of civilians who have been caught up in the aftermath of war. The degradation and the horror of those who are struggling to survive when the world around them has descended into chaos and insanity are portrayed in stark reality.

Lest you fear that this novel might be a dreary read, please allow me to dissuade you of this thought. Far from it: The characters are all good people, and they all hold on to the constant thought that "This, too, shall pass," which somehow keeps them hoping for better days to come. In addition, the main plot involves a very touching love affair between Callum Finella and Anna Emmerich.

So far, the reality of war has been distant for the Emmerichs, a family of aristocratic Germans who live at Kaminheim, a vast farming estate dedicated to growing sugar beets, located in Poland near its western border with Germany. They are German citizens who live in an area that had always been part of Germany until the region was ceded to Poland after the Armistice of World War I.

Twenty-five years after he had served as a soldier in World War I, Rolf Emmerich and his wife, Mutti, have three sons and a daughter. To date little has changed for them other than the fact that their eldest son, Werner, has been drafted into the German army. The Nazis have conquered Poland and the Emmerichs are once again German citizens instead of being aliens viewed with distrust by their Polish neighbors. On this point their life has greatly improved, so much so that Mutti is vociferous in her praise of Hitler. The others are much more muted in the face of whispered rumors about wartime atrocities along with questions about the disappearance of their few Jewish friends.

Along with having been a former German officer, Rolf Emmerich’s wealth, privilege, and membership in the Nazi Party allow him certain advantages, among them the right to have seven POW’s assigned to their farm to help in the farm work. The six other POW’s have recently been removed, but Rolf pulls the strings necessary to have Callum Finella, a Scottish paratrooper, remain behind. Little do Rolf or Mutti suspect that Anna, their beautiful 18-year-old daughter, has fallen in love with this tall, muscular Scotsman.

Soon bombs exploding in the distance announce the approach of the Russian army. The Emmerichs are forced to flee Kaminheim with Callum hidden in their wagon. Just as they depart, Anna’s father and twin brother are belatedly drafted into the army. Mutti, Anna, and her 10-year-old brother, Theo, are left alone to head west. They join a rag tag horde of refugees, all fleeing in the same direction in the hope of finding sanctuary in central Germany.

A helpful German soldier named Manfred joins them on their journey, but in reality he is Uri Singer, a Jew from Schweinfurt who fears that he has lost his entire family in Auschwitz. Uri had escaped from a cattle car on the way to a concentration camp, and now he masquerades as a soldier by wearing the uniform taken from a man he had killed.

While the inspiration for this book came from a diary written by the grandmother of family friends of the Bohjalians, the author has obviously fleshed out the concept with extensive and copious research in order to give this story an exacting verisimilitude that only adds to its power.

Carl M. Zapffe is a part time resident of Gills Rock. He is a prolific writer of book and movie reviews, which he publishes on his two Web sites: http://www.catsmeowbooknook.com and http://www.catsmeowmoviecritic.com.