“The Beetle Girl” by Gina Mayer

Dusseldorf in autumn 1945: Kathe Arensen, born Mertens was forty and a devout Catholic. Nothing private has saved her when she was forced to flee in a bomb alarm headlong into the shelter. After her home was bombed, she has found refuge in an attic. Only her Bible remained her. She likes to read from the Gospels, or simply strikes randomly on a page, the passage then be interpreted as a message for their day. Her husband Wolf in captivity. To bite it has hardly anything.

With their reference card she spends hour after hour in line at the counter at the food distribution. A sack of rice or barley – is never enough for everyone. Then, the switch is closing – Unfortunately for Lara and all the others, and the wait was once again in vain

Before the war, Kate worked as a midwife at the hospital.. Now you call them private for help, and they can only hope that you pay her in exchange for their services something to eat or trade.

But often enough the poverty of the pregnant woman is so pitiful that it be satisfied with a promise of later needs or their worthless clutter it with.

Hunger is an overpowering impulse, and he led Käthe to a fact, they reject in principle actually. But the only seventeen year old Ingrid urges her to help her out of a predicament. For a fur coat her, sent exchanged on the black market, a few days can fill the stomach, can be wide propose abortion Kathe.

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But that it has a threshold exceeded: once abortionist, always abortionist. Among women it speaks like wildfire around where they can find help.

When cleaning up amid a debris field at the Königsallee Kate runs into the pediatric nurse Lilo Hambach again, she knows from the days of gynecology, and together they set up a small practice with examination chair in a basement. Lilo has relations with a British sergeant who worried for a bit of German lessons ether, penicillin, disinfectants and the like. Soon they have every day, two customers, the greatest need is overcome, and both the standalone Kathe and Lilo’s family with two children and husband it is compared to other remarkably well.

The Düsseldorf author Gina Mayer, 1965 born, quite a number of books authored, which are located in the German past since the mid-19th century, many of them young people. There are entertainment novels entitled to serious topics, solid character design and historical accuracy. With the “beetle girls” they put us in a bitter hard post-war years. In the gloomy backdrop of the ruins of war has made impressively two exemplary women’s fates as the subject of her novel. Like so many others have to fight every day of life hard on their own or for their families.

Neither Kate nor Lilo are unscrupulous traders, who want to beat out of the misery of the women profit for themselves. On the contrary, Kate knows that what she does – kill a living creature – is condemnable morally questionable and before God. Before making an intervention, it examines the patient weighs up responsibly if they do not endanger their health, and does her best to convince her that she still discharges her child.

Kate and her husband have always wanted a child. If he is still alive when he comes back to her, then everything will change … With this hope, their Bible texts and the considerations which would Wolf say to all this, she is determined to end the illegal basement and bustle soon. </ P Although>

Lilo man sitting at home, but he is traumatized. He absently staring in front of him, to work it is of no use to him shaking hands. What he had to do during the war for the Nazis, he has not told Lilo, and what drives them along with Kate, she can not trust him. Welfare of the whole family depends on Lilo. What little money she earned as Trümmerfrau, front and back is not enough. So she grabs the saving straw, which its stretched with Kitty’s business idea contrary. Finally, it will become the driving force Kathe always good zuredet if their conscience knocks too loud.

During the storyline to a dramatic end tapers, the author weaves sent the past of her characters in memories, dreams, live reports and experiences one. The extent to which spouses are estranged from each other Hambach, Mayer has literarily very well designed. Instead of openness there is silence. Both partners watching each other, an idea and think we know what the other knows, thinks, feels, does, but since all this is figured only superficial behavior, they often attract enough wrong conclusions. Her daily life is a misery.

The war has brought many personal marginal experience and smashed the whole value structure. Where everyone is fighting for survival, the bad man’s boom have: ruthless selfishness, cold extortion, cowardly looking away, Deceiving love promises of pure self-interest … Some have lost all inhibitions, others quarrel with their fate, are broken, stripped of all illusions. Gina Mayer’s novel offers from all that enough credible examples, and Käthe and Lilo make their own individual experiences with such people. They need each other, support each other, feel the needs of others, are there for each other. It her destiny despite all adversities and dangers and look into a future in which it can only go up.