A Train in Winter - A Review

A Train in Winter tells the fascinating story of the French resistance during World War II. The author, Caroline Moorland, focuses her book on the women of the French resistance. These women might not wield guns or plant bombs, but they do house refugees in their hotels, print papers in their basements, and hand out flyers in the streets. These women chose to risk their lives rather than run to safety or simply endure. The women are grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and children, and all are drawn into the fight for different reasons. Some women fight for their children’s futures. Others fight for those who are being oppressed. Others still fight because they wish to continue the work of their arrested husbands, brothers, and fathers. A Train in Winter follows these women as they endure arrests at the hands of both the French and Nazis, torture and starvation in the death camps, and watching as all those they hold dear die around them.

Reading the introduction and book jacket, I expected something entirely different from A Train in Winter. I expected the author to focus more on the personal experiences of the women in the resistance and less on the overarching, historical events. Unfortunately, there are a minimum of fifty women mentioned in A Train in Winter, making it impossible for the reader to connect with any of the women. I would have much preferred Moorland to focus on several women rather than including everyone. The book would have been much better if she had alternated between chapters with background information and chapters with selections from her interviews. As it was, I couldn’t keep anyone straight and felt no connection to the women or their stories. The book lacked a sense of purpose and strength because of this excess of information. It became merely a dry, history book about an interesting topic, instead of the celebration of women and the friendships that kept them alive.