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Copper Fire (Copper Star Series, Book 2)

Suzanne Woods Fisher
Vintage Romance Publishing (2007)
ISBN 9780981559209
Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (3/08)

“Copper Fire” begins in July of 1945 in the town of Copper Springs, Arizona.  Louisa, a former Resistance worker from Germany, has settled in to her new life as the wife of Reverend Robert Gordon.  Also living in their household is William, Robert’s deaf son with his former wife Ruth, and Aunt Martha, Robert’s aunt.  Any sense of a quiet family life is disrupted when a telegram is delivered for Louisa informing her that her niece Elisabeth has just been let go from Dachau, one of the worst of Hitler’s labor camps.  Louisa makes the decision to travel to Germany and bring the girl back to the US to live with them. 

In the back of her mind she wonders how the International Red Cross Tracing Service was able to track her down to Copper Springs.  When Louisa arrived in the US she had changed her name to hide her identity.  Her question was soon answered when she arrived at the Red Cross facility in Munich to pick up her niece and saw Karl Schneider standing before her.  He was the one who had recognized Elisabeth and tracked down Louisa.  Even though she had come close to marrying him, Karl was the one person in the world that she felt that she could never forgive as he had betrayed her in one of the worst ways you could imagine.  Karl asked for forgiveness but Louisa would not freely offer it.  Instead she asked Karl to track down Friedrich Mueller, a man who had betrayed her family and the whole town of Copper Springs.  With this she left Germany and took Elisabeth back to the US with the difficult task of trying to assimilate her into a safe, post-war life, all while expecting a baby of her own.

“Copper Fire” is the sequel to Suzanne Woods Fisher’s first novel “Copper Star.”  While I have not had the privilege of reading the first book in the series, this second novel read very much like a stand-alone novel.  There was enough information divulged at the beginning of, and throughout the book, that I had a clear sense of the chain of events that led everyone to where they are now. 

Throughout “Copper Fire” I really got to know and understand the characters as they are very well-developed.  From Elisabeth and her “organizing” to William and his spying, each character has such unique traits and personalities.   I don’t think that there was one major player that I did not feel that I completely “knew” by the time the novel was finished. 

The storyline was very engaging and I found the novel to be hard to put down.  I read the entire book from start to finish in one day because I could not wait to find out what was going to happen next.  Fisher is a very talented historical writer and is really able to draw the reader in and keep them transfixed until the last page is turned.  Whether you have read the first novel in the Copper Star series or not, I believe that any fan of historical fiction will enjoy “Copper Fire.”  I look forward to reading more books by Woods in the future.         

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