Wunderland is a novel about two families, mainly focusing on female characters, over more than fifty years, in Bremen, Germany in the 1930s and New York City in 1989. It starts out at the end of the story, with middle aged Ava Fisher receiving news of her mother Ilse’s death, along with her mother’s ashes, and letters her mother had written. Ava does not want her thirteen year old daughter to see this all, since she told her daughter that her grandmother died more than 10 years ago. The next scene goes back to a middle school classroom in Germany years before the Second World War. Renate has brought in a rude postcard and her teacher finds it. She is scared that she will get into terrible trouble but then another student, Rudy, saves the situation by taking responsibility and blaming it on the Jews, and he wins her admiration. After school, Renate goes home with her best friend Ilse, and they go into a Jewish bakery, even though the day is one designated for boycotting Jewish businesses. At this point, Ilse’s family is in favor of Hitler and National Socialism, but does not support anti-Semitic ideas.

Much of Wunderland depicts the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany, and especially its effect on schools and young people. Much of this comes in how the friendship of Renate and Ilse changes and becomes more distant. The tone shifts from the amusing incident of the postcard to horrific scenes of violence and hate. Presumably, this part of the book is well-researched reflects actual developments in Nazi Germany. While it is unsetting, readers will have come to sympathize with the characters from the early part of the novel, and so they won’t just label the terrible actions as those of terrible people, but will see the pressures there are to conform to the state-enforced anti-Jewish policies. These are the most powerful sections of the novel.

The story follows Ava from her childhood in an orphanage directly after the end of the war, where she meets other orphans all coping with their situations, and in her early schooling where she has to explain her family to the rest of the class, even though she does not know who her father was. Ava is furious with her mother for keeping so many secrets, and for being such a difficult person.

Much of Wunderland is about failures of friendship and parenting, and the resulting anger and dysfunction. It’s also about the functions of remembering and forgetting the past when the past is so painful. It raises issues of forgiveness but mainly it is about honesty and how much truth we can live with. It skips backwards and forwards through its time period, which helps to keep its secrets hidden until the end, and also highlighting some contrasts between prewar Germany and life in New York in subsequent decades. Ultimately, it manages to convey some of the horrific history of Germany by avoiding the worst horrors and keeping the story personal, so one might worry that it is a little light in its tone. But the humor and the melodrama do draw the reader into the story, and it does address powerful issues.