The year is 1945, and Anne Frank is sixteen years old. Having survived the concentration camps but lost her mother and sister along the way, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But it's not as easy to fit the pieces of their life back together. Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghosts of the horrors they experienced, while Pim is fixated on returning to normalcy. Her beloved diary has been lost, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem distant and pointless now. As Anne struggles to overcome the brutality of memory and build a new life for herself, she grapples with heartbreak, grief, and ultimately the freedom of forgiveness. A story of trauma and redemption, Annelies honors Anne Frank's legacy as not only a symbol of hope and perseverance but also a complex young woman of great ambition and heart.
Also by David R. Gillham
VIKING
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Copyright © 2019 by David Gillham
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Gillham, David R., author.
Title: Annelies / David R. Gillham.
Description: New York City : Viking, [2019] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018025172 (print) | LCCN 2018026671 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101601280 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399162589 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525561781 (export)
Subjects: LCSH: Frank, Anne, 1929-1945--Fiction. | Holocaust survivors--Fiction. | Psychic trauma--Fiction. | Amsterdam (Netherlands)--History--20th century--Fiction. | GSAFD: Alternative histories (Fiction)
Classification: LCC PS3607.I44436 (ebook) | LCC PS3607.I44436 A85 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025172
This is a work of fiction based on actual events.
Version_1
Contents
1. The Heath
1945
2. Her One True Confidante
1942
3. Diving Under
1942
4. The House Behind
1944
5. Radio Orange
1944
6. Burglars
1944
7. The Freedom of Sunlight
1944
8. Boulevard Des Misères
1944
9. A Prayer
1944
10. Hope
1945
11. Furies
1945
12. Survivors
1945
13. Grief
1945
1945
14. The Truth About Desire
1946
15. Jealousy
1946
16. Trust
1946
17. Forgiveness
1946
1945
18. Bread
1946
19. Betrayal
1946
20. A Kiss
1946
21. The Transvaal
1946
22. Another Birthday
1946
23. Sacrifice
1946
24. Enemy Nationals
1946
25. Pity
1946
26. The Fourth of August
1946
27. The Pages of Her Life
1946
28. The Canal
1946
29. Miep’s Typewriter
1946
30. God’s Comedy
1946
31. The Question of Forgiveness
1946
32. Truth
1946
33. Atonement
1946
34. The Diary of a Young Girl
1961
1961
35. Repairing the World
1961
I want to go on living even after my death!
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 5 April 1944
1 THE HEATH
We thought we had seen it all.
Until Belsen.
—J. W. Trindles “Until Belsen” 1945
1945
Konzentrationslager (KL)
BERGEN-BELSEN
Kleines Frauenlager
The Lüneburg Heath
THE GERMAN REICH
She lies sprawled among the dead who carpet the frozen mud flats, time slipping past, her thoughts dissolving. The last of her is leaking away as the angel of death hovers above, so close now. So close that she can feel him peeling away her essence. Her body is baked by fever and ripped by a murderous cough; her mind is more animal now than human. She is numb to the bitter cold that has penetrated her bones. Thirst is gone, and so is hunger. She has passed through them on her way out of her body.
But from somewhere there is a loud pop, the anonymous discharge of a rifle or a pistol, and she can feel the darkness above her hesitate. The sound of the gunshot has grabbed its attention, and instead of collecting her final breath, death, in its forgetfulness, passes over her. And in that fractured moment, the world that would have been takes a different path: a flicker of the girl she once was makes a last demand for life. A breath, a flinch of existence. A small, tentative throb of expectation dares to flex her heart. A beat. Another beat, and another as her heart begins to work a rhythm. She coughs viciously, but something in her has found a pulse. Some vital substance. She feels herself draw a breath and then exhale it. Slowly. Very slowly, she pries open her gluey eyelids till the raw white sunlight stings.
She is alive.
2 HER ONE TRUE CONFIDANTE
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.
—Anne Frank, from her diary, 20 June 1942
. . . all Dutch Jews are now in the bag.
—Dr. Hans Böhmcker, Beauftragter des Deutschen Reiches für die Stadt Amsterdam, 2 October 1941
1942
Merwedeplein 37
Residential Housing Estate
Amsterdam-Zuid