Cilka's Journey

 Heather Morris wrote Cilka's Journey as a sequel to her other novel The Tattoo Artist of Auschwitz. She spoke with Holocaust survivors. She researched records to put together this historical fiction based on a real woman who was born in Czechoslovakia. At age 16 she is put on a train to Auschwitz with her parents and elder sister. When she is freed from the concentration camp by the Russians she is put on trial and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for sleeping with the enemy. As if anyone in a concentration camp had a choice? She is sent to a Gulag inside the arctic circle where winter is completely dark, 24 hours a day, for four months. There she is to work in a coal mine. With luck she gets reassigned to work at the hospital. Cilka uses her wits, her strength, and her charm to survive. Although this book had dark moments, I enjoyed reading about Cilka power to persevere, to help others, and to try and ease the suffering of others.