Resources & Updates

September 2025 Review

The German Wife
by Kelly Rimmer
Reviewer: Dr. Martha Smith

Martha returned to lead our first discussion of the year with The German Wife by Australian author Kelly Rimmer, a work of historical fiction inspired by real events surrounding Operation Paperclip—the secret U.S. intelligence program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists to America after World War II.

Behind the Author

Martha shared fascinating insights from an Australian interview with Kelly Rimmer, who lives in a small rural town and was once a software project manager before becoming a novelist. Rimmer began writing in secret, setting a private goal to publish a book by age 35—and surpassed it, now with over two million books sold.

Her process blends research, daydreaming, and writing, and her background in tech even influenced her storytelling methods. Rimmer uses software to track historical timelines and character ages, and she first writes her novels chronologically, then uses another program to “chop them up” into alternating timelines. That, as several of us agreed, may explain the challenging back-and-forth structure of The German Wife!

About the Story

Set across Germany, the Dust Bowl era of Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama in the 1950s, the novel follows two women:

• Sofie, a German wife navigating life under Nazi control and the impossible moral choices it demanded.

• Lizzie, a Texas woman enduring the Dust Bowl’s hardships and later meeting Sofie when the German scientists arrive in the U.S.

The two women’s lives collide in Huntsville, where wartime secrets and moral scars come to light. Through their stories, Rimmer explores survival, guilt, hate, family loyalty, and forgiveness—asking what happens when we forget to see those we disagree with as human.

Martha walked us through the author’s research into Operation Paperclip, noting the tension between President Truman’s insistence on avoiding Nazi affiliation and the U.S. government’s quiet decision to recruit key scientists, including rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, who later became central to the American space program.

Discussion Highlights

Our group had a lively discussion around several themes and questions:

• Moral Complexity: Could Sofie’s choices be justified? How much control did anyone truly have under such regimes?

• Parallel Hardships: Lizzie and Sofie both endured loss and moral compromise to protect their families. One member noted that both women had to become someone else entirely to survive.

• Love and Guilt: Lizzie’s complicated loyalty to her traumatized brother Henry sparked deep conversation about family, mental illness, and compassion.

• Hate and Humanity: How do we process hatred as both personal emotion and social force? Is vengeance ever justice?

• Historical Parallels: Several drew connections between the Nazi atmosphere of fear and secrecy and the silences of the Jim Crow South—reminding us that evil often hides in cultural compliance.

• Storytelling Style: Some found the book’s alternating timelines confusing (perhaps thanks to the author’s editing software!), while others enjoyed the audio version, where different accents helped distinguish characters.

In Martha’s words:

“This story needed to be told—fact or fiction. It reminds us that history’s hard lessons still reach into the present.”

Looking Ahead

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, October 14, when Morgan Fuller will review The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya—another powerful true story of resilience and redemption.

We’re grateful to Martha for another rich and thought-provoking discussion that set the tone beautifully for a new year of reading together!