- Condemned by fate. Redeemed by love. -  

Celia Klein was barely sixteen when sent to Auschwitz and forced to work and starve for three years. After leaving Ravesbrück prison in 1945, she returns to Slovakia to find her family and discovers that her home has been seized by her father’s former employee. Everyone she encounters views her with suspicion and resentment.  

Then, without warning, Celia is arrested by the Soviets and falsely accused of being a spy.  Again, she is thrust into a filthy boxcar and transported to one of the worst places on earth. This time, Vorkuta, Siberia—a Soviet gulag one hundred miles above the Arctic Circle. Just when Celia despairs of ever surviving her cursed destiny, a kind female doctor offers a ray of hope, tending the ill and battered in the camp hospital. 

Struggling under brutal conditions to care for these patients, Celia gradually overcomes her bitterness and anger at her fate and retrieves her humanity. But the guilt of what she did to survive in Auschwitz persists as a blackness on her soul. 

Until one miraculous day, a man near death is admitted to the hospital—an extraordinary man of courage, intelligence, and compassion in a world of brutality, ignorance, and hatred.

The bond they form opens Celia’s heart and soul to healing. Will she find the courage to let go of her past and open her heart to love, or will she cling to her guilt and fall deeper into the darkness of Siberia?

by Julia George
Page Count: 296
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Publish Date: February 25, 2025
Imprint: Milford House
Genre: Historical

FICTION/Historical/World War II
FICTION/Jewish