If I Should Die Before I Wake

Written by Dan Nolan, this is the story of Hilary Burke, a neo-Nazi gang member in her town. Hilary had a few family problems, including an intense dislike, and sometimes even hatred, of her once neglectful, and now ‘reformed’ mother. She got involved in a neo-Nazi gang about the same time she got involved with another member named Brad.
When Hilary and Brad are in a motorcycle accident, and Hilary is critically injured, she finds herself only able to see this old woman. At first Hilary curses the old, Jewish woman, and then finds herself spinning back until she is no longer completely Hilary. Instead, she finds herself with the memories of a young girl named Chana, and though she has these memories and this new life, she can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right at first.
Chana is a young, Jewish violinist growing up in the Lodz area in Poland. She and her family are transported to the Lodz ghetto, where over time they are split apart and Chana and her Bubbe are taken to Aushwitz, where they have to work everyday to stay alive. Friends come and go, each day is different than the last, and Chana and Bubbe must find a way to survive together.
This book was recommended to me by my sister, along with many others I’ve been grateful to receive from her, and the first time I read it, a few years ago, it really pulled me in to listen to Chana’s tale. Han Nolan uses occasional transitions from the characters of Hilary back to Chana, and back again to tell two completely different, yet now intertwined, stories. Hilary’s learned lesson is a little cliché, and at first I thought that it was just another ‘reformed character’ story. And in a way, it is. But you really have to think further into why Hilary reformed her view towards the very end of the story. She went back into someone else’s memories and relived someone’s life during the Holocaust, seeing it from the other side. She had to ‘live’ through it as she went through Chana’s memories.
As I read through Chana’s life, I found that I had to keep reminding myself that situations like these really happened. Reading any story about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, it’s very easy to lose yourself and just think that it’s fiction. While many stories are fiction, most of them are based on real events, or how it would have happened. Every time Hilary ‘wakes up’ from her life as Chana, she sees the old woman, though she never speaks. Who is this woman? Why is she the only person Hilary can see, yet she can hear her mother beside her? Why is Hilary thrown back into the life of this specific Jewish girl? All of these were the questions I was asking as I was reading the story, and though I know the answers, you’ll have to read the book to find out.