"Long Way Home" by Lynn Austin

Peggy Serrano couldn't wait for her best friend to come home from the war. But the Jimmy Barnett who returns is much different from the Jimmy who left, changed so drastically by his experience as a medic in Europe that he can barely function. When he attempts the unthinkable, his parents check him into the VA hospital. Peggy determines to help the Barnetts unravel what might have happened to send their son over the edge. She starts by contacting Jimmy's war buddies, trying to identify the mysterious woman in the photo they find in Jimmy's belongings. Seven years earlier, sensing the rising tide against her people, Gisela Wolff and her family flee Germany aboard the passenger ship St. Louis, bound for Havana, Cuba. Gisela meets Sam Shapiro on board and the two fall quickly in love. But the ship is denied safe harbor and sent back to Europe. Thus begins Gisela's perilous journey of exile and survival, made possible only by the kindness and courage of a series of strangers she meets along the way, including one man who will change the course of her life.

This book has two excellent stories in it. I especially enjoyed Peggy's story as she's trying to reconstruct what happened to Jim in the war and bringing Jim's veteran friends to come help him, all the while--without realizing it--she's helping each one of them, too. She's sweet and relatable. Gisela's story tells a bit of history I had never heard before--about a luxury liner full of Jews that legally left Germany for Cuba, only to be turned away at Havana, rejected by America and Canada, and sent back to Europe, where the Jews were largely spread back across countries that Germany would soon conquer. Gisela is a strong heroine, whose friends and family and comforts keep being whittled away.

I love how the title fits both storylines: Gisela and her people, after being chased from Germany, are just looking for a home, be it in Cuba, Ecuador, Belgium, the US, or--ultimately--Palestine. And it's a long time coming. In Peggy's storyline, the GI's have returned home physically, but so many of them lost their faith and hope overseas. With PTSD, it's a long, long road home for many of them.

The one thing that bothered me (and this is a common complaint of dual timeline books) is that it could have been published as two separate books--one about Gisela, one about Peggy--and you could read one without reading the other and still have a complete story without losing much impact. They intersect, of course, near the end, but Gisela's story didn't really have an impact on Peggy's, and vice versa. Only because they both know Jimmy do the heroines ever cross paths. I prefer a dual timeline where the two stories are so intertwined that to separate one ruins the other, and that definitely wasn't the case with this book.

Thank you Tyndale House and NetGalley for the complimentary e-book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.