Enemies in Love: A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance
By: Alexis Clark / Narrated By: Allyson Johnson
Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
A book combining History, Romance, and WWII?!? I SHOULD’VE loved this!
But I didn’t. Cuz, see, I dunno if it’s because by the time author Alexis Clark started this book both Elinor and Frederick were dead and she couldn’t interview them directly, or if it’s because both Elinor and Frederick treated their sons poorly—I never really came to feel much for either of them. There’s a sort of detached sense regarding them that I never warmed up to ‘em.
Elinor was a nurse who spent her WWII years in the military, segregated from whites and serving at a POW camp because it was thought that fraternization between the white Germans and the black nurses would be nil. After all, Nazis were into the whole Aryan ideal thing, and Hitler’s views on blacks were, surprise surprise, most severe.
But Frederick served only because he was drafted, not from any ideological belief system on his part. And here’s another spot where the book kinda lost me. We go waaaaaay into Frederick’s family background, how his father was a womanizer, cruel, distant, never had anything good to say about his family. How his mother was a fashion plate, never said anything about the womanizing, would beat her children with a cane, would dote on Frederick at times.
We get the same backstory on Elinor too, so I’m assuming we get such detail from surviving family members so we get a more fleshed-out backstory there than the romance and family life of the two after the war. Interestingly enough, and help me read between the lines here, only one of Elinor and Frederick’s sons agreed to be interviewed for this project; Stephen declined.
Which is not surprising when we hear what all son Christopher has to say on his parents and their family. Apparently, after forming their union, Elinor and Frederick really didn’t have much time for anyone but their unit as a couple; nope, sorry kids—You’re on your own. That you’re biracial in a racist world? Well, neither Elinor nor Frederick are going to help you with that; they’re just going to go along in their little self-absorbed world. The only time Frederick shared anything with his sons was if he was playing his beloved jazz with them. And don’t even get me started on Elinor. Most of the book is about the rampant racism she suffered, the indignities, the hostility and violence. But she never shared anything to help her boys navigate their ways through such a world, through life.
Allyson Johnson does a decent job with the narration, but there’s not too much warmth in her voice, and that doesn't help at all when one is desperately trying to find something to like about the two major players in such a romance, in such fraught times. But she brings the tones of a skilled documentarian to the work, even if her German accents are a little off-putting.
This is CERtainly a worthwhile book if you’re looking to learn about the racism black military nurses suffered, or if you want to learn more about POW camps in America during WWII. It’s just that I could sum up the first few hours this way: POWs were treated waaaaaay better in the Jim Crow South than blacks were, even if you happened to be an officer in the military—if you were black, you were in for a whole world of humiliation and hard work.
I wish I could tell you more, and I did indeed listen to this twice. But really, there wasn’t much of a connection, and by the end, all I could feel was anger emanating from their two sons.
And that never makes for a comfortable listen if you’re going for Love Story of the Century.
There. I just saved you a LOT of time.
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