Book Review of "Family of Spies" by Christine Kuehn

 

I have just finished reading a new release from writer Christine Kuehn, "Family of Spies". Keep reading this blog post for all of my favorite moments from the book and to find out whether or not you should read it, too.

Family of Spies

by Andrea Catalano

My rating: ★★★☆☆ 3/5 stars

A propulsive, never-before-told story of one family’s shocking involvement as Nazi and Japanese spies during WWII and the pivotal role they played in the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It began with a letter from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come.

The Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard’s sister, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret―she was half Jewish―and Goebbels found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away. There, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. After Eberhard’s father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever.

Jumping back and forth between Christine discovering her family’s secret and the untold past of the spies in Germany, Japan, and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast-paced history at its finest and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941.

- from amazon.com

Book Review and Discussion of

"Family of Spies" by Christine Kuehn

What Worked For Me

Unique slice of history

I learned a lot about the attack on Pearl Harbor from reading "Family of Spies". I don't know whether this is an embarrassing statement to make, but I had genuinely never considered that there were spies in Hawaii monitoring Pearl Harbor! The story of Christine's grandparents traveling from Germany to Hawaii and all of the espionage work that they did there in preparation for the attack was eerie but fascinating. 

Great pacing, quick read

I love the genre, but non-fiction history reads are frequently dense and take weeks for me to get through. It was a treat to be able to pick up "Family of Spies" and get through it so quickly, because it is under 300 pages, while still getting a unique perspective on an infamous historical event.

What I Struggled With

Missing perspectives

The story of Christine and her family hinges on the experiences of her father. For most of her life, Christine was not aware of the relationship her family had with Pearl Harbor. When Christine finds out and brings it up to him, he denies or obfuscates and changes the subject. Shortly thereafter, he begins to experience dementia, and that's how we experience Christine's father for the vast majority of the book. However, Christine cites her father as a source throughout the book. I think it would've been helpful and felt more cohesive if some of those conversations had made an appearance. Without those firsthand conversations, his reliable input felt disjointed from our experience of him as a reader.

Comment down below if you have read "Family of Spies" by Christine Kuehn. Let me know what worked for you in this book and what you struggled with while reading!