The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna

Good morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Lucy Sanna's fiction debut, The Cherry Harvest. 

For orchards like the Christiansens’ the war has meant at least one year without harvest already. And it's not due to lack of crop, but lack of help throughout the season. To that end, Charlotte Christiansen has an idea: what if they were able to employ German prisoners of war? The idea is put to a vote and just barely accepted, with many locals vehemently opposed to the idea.

Even Charlotte can’t deny having her own concerns about the issue and finds herself on edge waiting for any one of the prisoners to make a wrong move. Then her husband brings one of the PWs, a professor, into their home to tutor their teenage daughter and Charlotte fears her decision could endanger them all.

It might come as a surprise to some that putting POWs (they're referred to as PWs in the book) to work here on the home front was something of a common practice. Based on what I've read about it personally, I think Sanna has done a wonderful job portraying the feelings and concerns of those affected.

Charlotte in particular is very anxious about the issue. She knows their orchard and their household can't survive another year without profits - she's already feeling the pinch in the first chapter when she resorts to killing one of her daughter's rabbits for dinner. But Charlotte also can't stand the idea of "the enemy" being in her midst. Not while her own son is risking his life fighting against them. And yet Charlotte is the one most greatly changed by the end of the story.

The Cherry Harvest was not at all what I expected. In a totally good way, though. Sanna managed to keep more than a few surprises in her pocket, surprises that made The Cherry Harvest a bit of a standout compared to similar titles - in my opinion at least.

 Rating: 4.5/5

(Don't forget, you can check out an excerpt and enter to win a copy of The Cherry Harvest here.)