My 5-Star review in entirety published at Amazon for author HM Holten’s evocative historical fiction:

Whereas ‘Snares and Delusions,’ the first book in the Triptych, focuses on Hedda West, her dominant personality overpowers her grown daughter Ellie, in ‘Woes and Wonders,’ book 2. She even overpowers Hans, Ellie’s husband.

I have such high regard for Book 2 because of the author’s seamless and natural infusion of the devastating effects of war on Ellie and Hans’ marital relationship through World Wars I and II. The polarizing effect filters down to their children and grandchildren.

Through Ellie’s flighty narrative, the author conveys both her scatterbrained preoccupations and accurate political convictions. Her husband dismisses her intellectualism; her mother ridicules it. Hedda maintains a cold distance from Ellie, keeping secrets of her birth from her. Hans is his own harbinger of dark secrets inbred from shameful experiences while a prisoner of war.

I found it difficult to like Hedda, Ellie or Hans for their inability to relate with genuine warmth.

I highly recommend this work of historical fiction for its sobering portrayal of war on many levels, and its flawed characters whose frailties are shaped by life’s woeful experiences.