Season of My Enemy

Not every World War II Story takes place on the front lines.  Some of them occur at home where farmers have to keep their farms going to supply food to the troops overseas.  Some of the encounters with opposing forces take place on these farms where prisoners of war are working the farms.  Sometimes a friendship develops among the prisoners and the farmers. Basically, I have just described the plot of Season of My Enemy.  

Fannie O'Brien is the eldest child at the O'Brien home and is tasked with keeping the farm running to the best of her ability.  Her mother applies to have German PWs come to work the farm and help with harvest.  With only three of her five children at home and one of those in school, the extra help is needed.  Most of the PWs are just young boys who were conscripted to fight for ideologies that are not their own. A few are older, and one of the older ones develops a friendship with Fannie.  Through her work at the library, she is able to supply the PWs with reading material to aid them in learning English.  Wolf, who was a teacher in Germany, took to teaching the other PWs English as he learned it so that they all could understand the tasks at hand on the farm where they were working. 

When one of Fannie's brothers, Cal, comes home before the war was over, he is bothered by the fact that there are Germans working the farm.  His trust of the PWs comes slow, and he watches them with a gun in his hand.  He is a bit more relaxed the second season they come.  The turning point for Cal is when Liza comes to read him the riot act for his behavior. She points out to him in very real terms that he's not pulling his weight on the farm, and his bitterness is helping no one.  

I've given a rather disjointed accounting of what happens in the book, but I assure you that this story by Naomi Musch works together as a cohesive whole.  I've left out significant events, but those are the ones that add excitement to the book and make it so hard to put down.  

This is a five star book, with two thumbs up, and a successful farm harvest. 

Barbour Books provided the copy I read for this review.  All opinions expressed are solely my own.