No happy ending – but love is stronger than hate, by Philippa Linton

Star of David ornament, Pixabay

In the first week of 2020, I read a Young Adult novel called The Earth is Singing by Vanessa Curtis.

The book is based on the author’s research into her Jewish heritage and what happened to her relatives in World War Two. It’s a vivid and compelling read, written in the first person and the present tense.

The year is 1941.  Hanna is a 15 year old Jewish girl living in Riga, Latvia, with her mother and indomitable Omama (grandmother).  She wants to be a ballerina.  Her father is missing, having been hauled off to a Soviet labour camp.   Life in Latvia has been hard enough under Soviet occupation – it becomes unimaginably worse for Latvia’s Jews as the Nazis move into Riga that summer.  Chapter by chapter, the Nazis tighten their noose around the Jewish community: chapter by chapter, the cruelty and depravity get worse.  The terrible significance of the book’s title is revealed near the end, and it’s a shocking reveal. 

There’s no happy ending: I didn’t expect or even want one.  It would have felt like a cop-out, given the fate that befell millions of girls like Hanna.  And yet, despite the atrocities depicted in the story – all based on meticulous historical research – I found this an illuminating, rather than depressing, read.  The author’s prose has a crystal-clear simplicity and beauty.  She never sugar-coats the horrors, but the humanity and dignity of her main characters – Hanna, her mother and her grandmother – shine above the viciousness descending on them.  Although this little family are swallowed up by the tsunami of genocide, their sheer, ordinary humanity is what makes this harrowing story bearable.  The book is the author’s tribute to her people and what they suffered, and I would highly recommend it not just to teenage readers but anyone wanting to know more about the Holocaust.

A particular story can reach that inner place where we can face up to the reality of evil, face up to what humans can inflict on other humans. Such stories, whether they are actual biographies or fiction based on historical events, can show that love is ultimately stronger than hate.  That is not in any way to downplay the vast horror of the Holocaust and other genocides.  To read anything about the Holocaust is to literally look into the depths of hell itself.  But, ultimately, the Nazis did NOT win. They did not succeed in wiping out Europe’s Jews, although they came dreadfully close. Taking the long view of history –  indeed, taking the biblical view of history – we Christians most certainly believe that evil will not have the last word.

Nothing in my own history or personal experience comes close to that of someone who has lived through actual genocide. Nothing in my life approaches that level of trauma.  But to seek truth, to remember and honour the souls who suffered, to shine beauty on dark places … this is the kind of writing that enriches us and makes us want to be better people, whether we read it or write it ourselves.

Such writing is a way of fighting back against the dark.


I am a personal assistant in the education and learning department of the United Reformed Church. I'm also a Reader - licensed lay minister - in the Anglican church. I like writing.