Safe Haven ~ Review

Safe Haven
The Peacemakers 3
By Anna Schmidt

Suzanne Randolph made a mistake and her career is the causality.  But she has a chance to resurrect both her career and her dream.  Just under 1000 displaced refugees are being brought to America as guests of the President.  But these guests are confined to a camp in Oswego, New York, and they will be sent back to wherever they came from when the war ends.

Suzanne needs to find the story.  The story that will make the difference in the lives of these people who have lost everything.  The story that will erase her mistake.  The story that will make her career. And meeting Theo Bridgewater just might be the story she's looking for - his aunt, uncle, and young cousin are three of these displaced people who have no future until the war's end.

But there is more to Oswego than Suzanne expected and she just might rediscover the Light that was once the focus and center of her life.  And maybe she'll find the peace she once had.

Safe Haven is the perfect conclusion to the Peacemakers series.  Unlike the first two books, this book is set entirely in America and not Europe.  The war in Europe is drawing to a close and we are able to discover the fate of Joseph and Beth; Ilse, Franz, and Liesl; and Detlef Buch.

Taking place over a little more than a year we discover little known facts about life in America for both the few displaced persons who managed to be allowed entry into the country and even the fate of POWs who were brought here.  This is Historical fiction that will touch you and leave with a thirst to discover more about this troubled and turbulent time that left a mark on the world.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher Shiloh Run Press through BookFun/TBCN in exchange for my honest review.

About the Book:

When journalist Suzanne Randolph hears about FDR’s plan to bring a boatload of displaced WWII refugees to America, she knows it may be her last chance to redeem her flagging career. Suzanne follows the story to Oswego, New York, where she meets Theo Bridgewater, a Quaker dairy farmer from Wisconsin who has come to reunite with his uncle and aunt and cousin. Theo’s fight to spare his relatives the return to Germany becomes Suzanne’s fight as she does everything that the “power of the pen” can muster to help win public sympathy for the cause.


About the Author:

Anna Schmidt is a three-time finalist for the coveted RITA award presented annually by Romance Writers of America. Her novel A SISTER’S FORGIVENESS gives Anna her fourth finalist honor for the Reviewers’ Choice Awards from Romantic Times magazine. She has won that award twice before.

Anna is the author of over twenty-five works of historical and contemporary fiction including her most recent series—THE PEACEMAKERS – set in World War II.   All God’s Children was released last fall and tells the story of Beth—an American Quaker trapped in Nazi Germany where she finds herself fall in love with Josef—a young German medical student who is determined to save his beloved homeland from Hitler’s oppressive regime. Publisher’s Weekly had high praise for the novel noting that "The activities of the White Rose resistance group, as well as the prisoner uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp, are more than simple historical context. Schmidt seamlessly integrates these actual events, and the courageous real-life individuals who fought against Hitler’s regime, with her fictional characters and their story, to produce a strong tale of hope and love in the face of insurmountable obstacles."

In Book 2 Simple Faith, Anja--a young Danish woman and friend of Beth’s continues the fight against tyranny as she helps Peter, an American airman shot down over occupied Belgium, return to his base in England. The final book in the series—Safe Haven—was published in September, 2014 and is set in America—in the small upstate New York town of Oswego where a disgraced journalist tries to revive her career telling the story of the refugees from Europe who spent eighteen long months held in a fort there waiting for the war to end.