My Enemy's Cradle

""My Enemy's Cradle" has everything: It is a page turner full of twists and turns. It is a love story. It is a war story. It reveals a dark piece of history. There is only one caveat to this novel: you will want to read it straight through. So put aside absolutely everything, and begin." -- Ann Hood, author of "The Knitting Circle"
""My Enemy's Cradle "offers intrigue, suspense, compassion, heartbreak and joy. Sara Young writes with the intelligence and authority of an historian, but also with the sensitivity, precision, insight and grace of a poet." --Elizabeth Berg, author of "Talk Before Sleep
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"Sara Young explores with an unwavering voice the timeless, universal and yet intensely personal themes of love, loss, morality and the choices that shape our lives." --Pam Jenoff, author of THE KOMMANDANT'S GIRL
"As her spirited heroine Cyrla navigates the treacherous labyrinth of the SS breeding nurseries, Sara Young shines a powerful flashlight on one of the lesser-known Nazi atrocities: the thievery of children from their mothers. Young's research is so scrupulous that when devouring this novel, you'll swear you're reading a genuine survivor account, and you'll hold your breath as Cyrla attempts to find and found her own family." -- Jenna Blum, author of THOSE WHO SAVE US

Cyrla's neighbors have begun to whisper. Her cousin, Anneke, is pregnant and has passed the rigorous exams for admission to the Lebensborn, a maternity home for girls carrying German babies. But Anneke's soldier has disappeared, and Lebensborn babies are only ever released to their fathers' custody--or taken away.

And then in the space of an afternoon, life falls apart. A note is left under the mat. Someone knows that Cyrla, sent for safekeeping with her Dutch relatives, is Jewish. She must choose between certain discovery in her cousin's home and taking Anneke's place in the Lebensborn--Cyrla and Anneke are nearly identical. If she takes refuge in the enemy's lair, can Cyrla escape before they discover she is not who she claims?
Mining a lost piece of history, Sara Young takes us deep into the lives of women living in the worst of times. Part love story and part elegy for the terrible choices we must often make to survive, "My Enemy's Cradle "keens for what we lose in war and sings for the hope we sometimes find.