Turk, Marilyn. The Escape Game. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Books, 2023.
Heroines of WWII
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Summary
A Board Game Holds Keys to Prisoners’ Escape
Full of intrigue, adventure, and romance, this series celebrates the unsung heroes–the heroines of WWII.
After the Nazis started the bombing blitz of England, Beryl Clarke puts her college on hold to return to Leeds, care for her mother, and work as a secretary at the Waddington game company. While she endures the war at home, her brother James fights the enemy in the air. When he is shot down, injured, and captured, James reunites with a former college friend American POW Kenneth Bordelon, and they plan to escape the Nazi prison camp. Beryl knows there is a board game with escape plans being delivered to POWs by the Red Cross. But how how can she let them know about the game’s secret without revealing the information to the enemy?
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My Review
Having grown up playing Monopoly and watching Hogan’s Heroes there were several aspects of the story I could relate to even though I was not alive during World War II. Marilyn Turk wrote a very engaging story that made it hard to put the book down. The book starts and ends as a frame tale with an elderly Beryl interacting with her granddaughter as she packs up her treasures before moving out of her home. Turk then alternates chapters between Beryl and Kenneth – Beryl in England and Kenneth in a POW camp in Germany. She also has a surprise relating to one of the characters.
Readers will be able to tell that Turk did her research in preparation for writing this book. I appreciated the author’s note at the close of the book which details some of that research.
Even though The Escape Game is written for the adult audience, I think it could find a place in a K-12 Christian school library. It would complement a unit on World War II in either middle or high school.
I received a complimentary copy of The Escape Game. This is my honest review.
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