📚Family Secrets. Frank’s ARC #BookReview of #HistoricalFiction Damages Carried Down by Michael Keefe, for Rosie’s #BookReview Team #RBRT #BookX – Rosie Amber
Today’s team review is from Frank.
Frank has been reading Damages Carried Down by Michael Keefe.
Damages Carried Down by Michael O’Keefe
Throughout my reading of this excellent work, I was reminded of Ian McEwan’s “Lessons” and John Boyne’s “All the Broken Places”. Both have a span of 70 years commencing in the aftermath of World War II. Both deal with individuals building new lives after a traumatic event and the impact on those they love.
Keefe’s novel spans the same duration but commences in 1914, ending in 1984. The story is told through the voices of four people. Josef Müller tells his experience as a private in the German Imperial Army at the start of what came to be known as the “Great War” in a journal addressed to his deceased older brother.
In 1930s New York, Kate Moore witnesses an altercation between her father and a stranger during which blows are exchanged. Also present is Bill, the son of the other man. As teenagers in 1939 the pair set out to find the story behind the seemingly unprovoked attack.
In 1984, Kate’s daughter Maggie comes across a journal written in German and sets about translating it. As Josef’s story emerges, she embarks on a journey to discover proof of the allegations it contains. She is pursued by Bill, now in his sixties and with his own devious motives for finding the truth about his father.
The four voices are presented in alternating chapters. Each voice is distinct and the four characters emerge as clearly differentiated individuals. It is this that makes the work such an extraordinary achievement. That and the tension created as snippets of the truth about the man everyone knows as Joseph Moore are gradually revealed.
The three periods, wartime 1914, the 1930s and 1984, are wonderfully evoked as are the locations in Europe, the UK and the USA. This is achieved with just the right amount of detail in each scene. Details the rendering of which also reveal each individual protagonist’s changing attitudes and beliefs, a tremendous achievement.
This is a must read for anyone interested in 20th century history and culture, from silent movies to swing, from jazz to Reaganism – with a soupçon of American support for Hitler in the late 1930s thrown in.
A thriller with a complex and highly involving plot. An absolute tour de force to which I’d happily give more than five stars if I could.
Book Description:
Some family secrets survive every generation.
In 1984, high school English teacher Maggie Moore feels quietly undone—by her stalled career, her fragile marriage, and the sense that her life in Northern California has narrowed. When she inherits a World War I journal written by her beloved grandfather, Joseph Moore, she expects a family keepsake but finds the entries written in German. Drawn into a past she never knew existed, Maggie begins translating the fragile pages at her family’s old home in Brooklyn, uncovering a story that challenges everything she believed about her family—and herself.
In 1914, German infantryman Josef MĂĽller writes in secret to his dead brother, confessing the brutality he witnesses under the command of the sadistic Heinrich Adler. When the journal is discovered, Josef makes a desperate choice: he deserts, steals the identity of a dead British soldier, and becomes Joseph Moore. But survival demands more than a new name, and the consequences of his deception will echo for decades.
In 1939 Brooklyn, Joseph’s daughter Kate Moore grows up in the shadow of her father’s silences. Her search for answers leads her to powerful brewery owner and crime boss Henry Adler—and into a dangerous relationship with Adler’s son, Bill. Decades later, Bill Adler, now an aging pawn shop owner and the last heir to a fading empire, believes Maggie’s journal may be his final chance at redemption—or revenge.
Spanning war-torn Europe, mid-century Brooklyn, and 1980s California, Damages Carried Down is a sweeping family saga that explores identity, guilt, and the fragile line between truth and survival. Rich in historical detail and emotional depth, Michael Keefe’s novel is an unforgettable meditation on the stories families tell, the secrets they keep, and the burdens passed from one generation to the next.
Goodreads (Book due to be published March 2027)
