Reviewed by Rosetta Diane Hoessli, Author
**** (Four Stars)

Billy Graham once said, “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”

Many individuals in pre-WWII, WWII, and post-war WWII history illustrate the truth of these words. Think Oskar Schindler who saved more than a thousand Jews, Miep Gies who hid the Otto Frank family and four other desperate Jews for more than two years, Irene Sendler who was a Polish Catholic social worker and her network of ten compatriots who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, among many other unsung heroes.

Basing her novel on such true events, Mirian Exall, author of DAUGHTERS OF RIGA (The Wild Rose Press, 2024), weaves a story that begins in 2003 and hurtles us backward to 1938, when two ordinary little girls, Dani and Berta, meet in the Dutch Consul’s office in Riga, Latvia. Although I knew about the Year of Horror (1940-1941) in Latvia, this tiny country wasn’t well-known to me. I had to locate it on a map right at the beginning of the novel, just to get my bearings, but the story doesn’t stay in Latvia, nor does it remain in 1938. Told in a completely unique fashion, we experience Amsterdam, London, Paris, and the countryside of the Netherlands as well – at different times, and through the eyes of different characters.

Beginning as a simple story of various individuals struggling to keep their balance as the world explodes all around them, DAUGHTERS OF RIGA surprises the reader as it builds in intensity and suspense until it finally winds down and relinquishes the past. The next generation, formerly unable to comprehend the horrors experienced by their elders, learn to accept and forgive.

I’m giving DAUGHTERS OF RIGA four stars only because I sometimes found myself having to go back to the beginning of a chapter to find out who is telling the story, when it’s occurring, and where they’re located. This interrupted the flow of an otherwise superbly written novel about one of my favorite subjects.