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My letter “H” pick for the A to Z Challenge is THE HIDING PLACE by Corrie ten Boom. I must confess this pick is a bit of a cheat in that I’ve read this previously, but it was a looooooong time ago (6th grade). Someone in my church passed her copy on to my mom and I commandeered it when it was clear she wasn’t going to read it.

Concentration Camps and Holocaust stories aren’t exactly ideal elementary school reading material, but I always read above my grade level and I remember this book made a huge impression on me at the time. I wanted to do a re-read to see if the story still stood up over time for me, and if the emphasis on Christian themes would overshadow the rest for me, now that I’m no longer eating, sleeping, and breathing Evangelical Christianity.

I’m happy to say that while Ms. ten Boom leans heavily on her faith throughout the narrative, I never felt like she was beating me with a bible, and her story is still as riveting and heart-wrenching as I remembered. From the day she bravely closed the secret door to hide her Jewish boarders from the Nazis who came to their home, then walked out the door to prison (deliberately leaving her packed bag of clothing and supplies behind because it was leaning on the secret door), then months of maddening solitary confinement, we feel every ounce of her fear and helplessness. When she and her beloved sister Betsy are shipped off to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Northern Germany, we watch her determination to survive despite overwhelming daily cruelties and heart-wrenching losses. When she’s finally released out of the blue, we live her wary confusion and weep with her at the kindness of strangers who helped her transition.

I have since learned that Ms. ten Boom was released due to a clerical error and one week later, all women her age at the camp were killed. Obviously, she was meant to carry this story to the rest of us, and she does so with clarity, empathy, and strength. I’m giving this four stars out of five, only because the story does meander at times, but otherwise, still a solid and worthwhile read.