“Treasures Hidden among Tragedy”: A Review of The Amber Crane, by Malve von Hassell

 (Odyssey Books, 2021). ISBN: ISBN: 978-1922311238 (ebook)

The Amber Crane is richly researched historical fiction with complex metaphors and a touch of magical realism. Before you begin, have a look at the cover, which holds a clue: a squadron of World War II planes and, amidst them, a crane carved in a chunk of amber.

Once you begin to read, you’ll see that the story primarily takes place in 1644, during The Thirty Years’ War (although no one living and fighting in that time knew how long it would be).

The story’s protagonist is Peter, who is training under a master to join the amber guild and become a paternostermaker, so named because they mostly made rosary beads. Like my 22-year-old daughter, Peter has never known life without war, and it has touched him in many ways. His older brother Lorenz—handsome, charming, and popular—who served in Queen Christina of Sweden’s Army, was killed during the war, although it was not combat related.

Peter’s mother died of grief at the news of the death of her son, and his father sometimes seems as though he would have preferred it to be Peter. The novel has many characters who lost their husbands and children on the battlefields. Peter also has a sister named Effie, who had suffered severe seizures as a child, is unable to look after herself and becomes the target of rape. His love for her is so great, at the halfway point of the book he makes a decision concerning Effie that we immediately know will have terrible consequences for him.

As Peter struggles to finish his studies before testing for membership in the amber guild while also looking after Effie, he interacts with members of the town, including Marte, the privileged daughter of the mayor. 

The carnage and disruption of war is the central theme of this book. Von Hassell is masterful at showing us how it is the ordinary, everyday people—the soldiers and merchants and their families—that suffer so greatly while leaders of countries make war upon each other.

The Duke of Prussia oversaw the amber guilds at the time, having taken control of them back from a private company, and there were many stringent rules concerning how much amber one artisan could have. When Peter finds pieces of amber washed up on the beach and decides to keep them to work on in secret, he is in defiance of the law. One of those pieces reminds him of a crane. This piece also sets the magical realism of the novel into motion.

Von Hassell’s stories read like fairy tales, with multilayered metaphors and provocative, haunting images. Despite the bleakness of war, there are abundant references to flowers. In terms of the magical realism, a quarter of the way through the story, Peter begins having conversations in the dream world (where everything appears in gray and black) with a girl named Lioba who lives in the war-ravaged world of 1944, when the Nazis are on the decline and the Russians are marching closer. Von Hassell writes these chapters in present tense—an excellent device to help the reader delineate between Peter’s waking and dreaming states. Although humankind has progressed technologically (electricity, coal furnaces) in the three centuries that separate them, warfare has also become more deadly. Lioba is usually on the run. There are several violent encounters and narrow escapes from death. She gives Peter perspective while Peter tries to help her evade the encroaching Russian army and the thugs who have taken over her town.

The stakes for both of the worlds Peter inhabits simultaneously raise as Peter nears his guild test and the Russians arrive in 1944, with violence and despair in abundance whether Peter is sleeping or awake. In Lioba’s world, parents are committing suicide and ships full of refugees are being torpedoed (another example of the technology–morality gap).

A beautiful bridge scene between the waking and sleeping states is a piece of theatre presented on Shrove Tuesday, just before Lent. The play is a stylized confrontation between Death and Community. In the course of the scene, the theme of not seeing what is right before your eyes because of your being ensconced too deeply in your own private world is prevalent, and illuminates the dangers of the artist who must see all but sometimes only sees what they wish to. Further examining the world between the Real and the Imagined, and the overlapping Liminal zone of the supernatural, von Hassell presents us with the trial of an accused witch, which, in 1644, reflects the thousands of death during that time as a result of the witch hysteria in Europe, especially Scotland, and the American colony of Massachusetts. The story also reflects the supernatural in the connection between Peter and Lioba made through the amber crane—and what it ultimately means to both of their lives.      

For those interested in learning more about the considerable research that went into making The Amber Crane an authentic piece of historical fiction, von Hassell has included a section in the back that provides place names, key events, and an extensive glossary. She also includes a section with the origins of the songs and poems used throughout the book.