{Book Review} Three Sisters

There was one promise among three sisters – to stay together at all costs. Three Sisters by Heather Morris tells their tale of survival and love, from Slovakia to Auschwitz to Israel.

Three Sisters

Three Sisters by Heather Morris:

Just before their father’s death, three young girls make him a promise: they will stay together no matter what. But fate had other plans. 

When the Nazis took over Slovakia, the sisters were separated. The oldest and youngest were deported to a Nazi concentration camp while the middle sister was hidden away in a local hospital. It took more than a year before the three unite at Auschwitz. 

Three Sisters tells the tale of each sister – their journey from home to camp; the hardships endured; their hopes and aspirations for the future. 

Book Review:

While this is third book in the Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy, Three Sisters can be read as a standalone novel. The only thing you’d miss is a few nods to main characters from prior books. 

I appreciate how Morris takes a slightly different spin with the ending of each book. While all are primarily set during WWII in concentrations camps, each ends a bit differently – representing very different paths survivors took. The first book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, had the main characters returning to their home country. The second, Cilka’s Journey, finished with a woman being judged by her Soviet rescuers and sentenced to work in a Soviet labor camp. This last book showed the main characters escaping in the final days of the war, spending a brief time with Allied Forces, and then finding their way from postwar anti-Semitic Soviet Europe to the new Jewish homeland of Israel. 

While Three Sisters is a story of war, it’s more about love and resilience. A fierce love between three sisters who would do anything for each other, who wanted to be with each other at any cost. That love, that hope of being together again in a safe place, drove them to survive at any cost. It is that love that helped them overcome the range of emotions – guilt, anxiety, fear – that Auschwitz caused. It is that love that helped them forward.

 

Haven’t read my reviews the first books in the series? Check them out here: The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey

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