Last Key on the Ring

In Fitzgerald’s historical novel set during and after World War II, a German couple finds an abandoned baby from a Jewish family and decides to secretly raise her as their own.

In 1941, Roland and Sophia Adler, while inspecting a home for sale in their native Cologne, discover an untended baby in desperate need of care. They find photographs with the child’s name affixed to them—Bebba Maria Segal—and eventually discover that her Jewish family members were sent to concentration camps from which they’re unlikely to return. Sophia, who’s still grieving the death of her own child, quickly decides that she wants to protect the baby from a similar fate, although Roland vehemently objects; he’s a Nazi officer who’s given to saying things such as “Our Führer has given us our pride and confidence back.” However, Sophia insists, and they move into the appropriated home of the Segal family. Roland goes off to war, and Sophia secretly cares for the child, now named Olinda Maria Adler—a perilous decision that could lead to her death, if discovered. In this deeply sentimental novel, Roland eventually renounces his devotion to Nazism and commits to being Olinda’s father, but he anxiously frets that she will one day learn the truth about her ancestry—a secret kept not only from her, but also from her uncle, Barak, who pays them a visit. Predictably, as a young adult, Olinda encounters the truth in her father’s diary; she must find a way to comprehend this news about her origins, and what it portends for her relationship with the couple who raised her.

Readers will find that the best part of Fitzgerald’s novel is its unflinching depiction of a defeated Germany after the war—one decimated by poverty, mass dislocation, and, among former soldiers, fear of reprisals. Also, the author artfully demonstrates the fraught nature of decisions in which every option seems to be weighted with danger and feelings of guilt. However, the plot as a whole is exasperatingly convoluted, as there are simply too many deaths, and many of them detract from the central storyline. The novel’s chief failing, though, is its overheated writing style. After reading Roland’s diary, for instance, Olinda is portrayed as conflicted about his decision to guard her from the truth regarding her birth: “He’s still the same father I love. No, I won’t drive myself crazy with knowing something that had never hurt me. Yet…yet…O.” The diary itself is full of rambling, melodramatic laments, peppered throughout with references to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At one point early in the novel, Sophia is described as having “eyelashes like the teeth of a Venus flytrap” and radiating an “aura of tense sexuality but not that of an obvious specimen built for fruitful procreation and heavy work.” Such stylistic excesses tend to drain the story of any dramatic power it might have had.

An often haunting depiction of postwar Germany, hampered by an overly complex plot and overwrought prose.