Back Draft: Rebecca Donner

Reading Rebecca Donner’s stunning nonfiction book, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, I felt like I was in the passenger seat of a car, trying to jam my foot on the brake. From the very beginning, we know how the story ends: the central figure, Mildred Harnack, an American who fought in the underground German resistance in the years preceding and during World War II, is captured and beheaded on Hitler’s order. Donner unspools her narrative with deftness and considerable tension, drawing us deeper into Harnack’s gripping story to reveal a contrast of dark and light, sorrow and rebellion.

For Donner, that story is a personal one: Mildred Harnack was her great-great-aunt. When Donner turned sixteen, her grandmother gave her a small stack of Harnack’s letters. She made Donner promise to write Harnack’s story one day. “It was.”