I recently re-read The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger. It's the book my synagogue book club is discussing this month for a Holocaust Remembrance observance. I read it last spring and wanted to refresh my mind before leading the discussion (or participating in the discussion). I'd gotten it as an Amazon Prime First Read, enjoyed it and thought it would make for a good, slightly different discussion.

After I reread The Star and the Shamrock, I immediately purchased the sequel, The Emerald Horizon, and quickly devoured that one. I think I found The Emerald Horizon a more satisfying read and truthfully, I think that this book would make for a better discussion, but only if The Star and the Shamrock is read first.

In The Star and the Shamrock, Ariella Bannon puts her children, Liesl and Erich, on the Kindertransport out of Germany. She's connected with her missing husband's cousin in England. Cousin Elizabeth will take the children off the train and will care for them until Ariella is able to be with them again. The Star and the Shamrock is about Ariella's difficult decision and the life the children come to have with Elizabeth - first in England and eventually in  Northern Ireland. It's primarily the story of Elizabeth, Liesl and Erich. We don't learn much more about  Ariella or what is happening to her back in Germany.

The Emerald Horizon picks up where The Star and the Shamrock left off. The sequel has two storylines going. We learn about Ariella's life during the war as we continue to learn about the children's lives in Ireland at the end of the war. Ireland at the end of the war is a place of uncertainty for the children of the Kindertransport as they wonder the fate of their families left behind in their home countries and what that will mean for their futures. Berlin at the end of the war remains an extremely dangerous place. Germany might have surrendered but conditions are still grim and it is impossible to know who can be trusted.

Of course what drives Ariella forward is the determination to be reunited with her children. That is something I can definitely relate to.

Grainger keeps adding books to The Star and the Shamrock series. Currently, there are two more novels. Each was declared to be the last in the series so who knows what might be coming. The Hard Way Home is about Liesl's university years and The World Starts Anew which picks up Erich's story in the 1950s. I'm on the fence about whether I'll read on, but I would highly recommend the first two novels in the series.