This is a lovely and inspiring story. Well written and rich, and I simply adore that it is based on real life and letters.

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. A positive review was not required. These are my honest thoughts.

What a sweet romance! Sometimes the best things in our lives are borne from the survival of our worst nightmares. This was definitely true for Miklos and Lili.

Content: crude sexual “humor” (mostly in first half), expletives, profanity, suicide

This book manages to be sweet and brusque and quiet and adventurous all at the same time. Nicely done.

Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this free readers edition. In exchange I am providing an honest review.

Using letters between his parents from late 1945 to early 1946, Gárdos shares the story of their meeting and love and what they both had to endure to get to each other.
Both Miklos and Lili survived World War II and the camps that were meant to kill them. Both were transported to Sweden for medical care and respite. They did not know each other then but soon would. Miklos was told he had 6 months more to live, his lungs would not recover or heal from the awful case of TB he had contracted in the last days of the war. Determined to not accept that fate, he did after all survive Belsen, he found out all the names and locations of the women from his region in Hungary under the age of 30 that were also in Sweden for medical care after the war. There were 117. So he wrote all 117 the same exact letter - only changing the name of the recipient - and began corresponding with those who wrote him back. He was convinced he would find a wife this way. He was convinced he would live longer than 6 months. Lili was one such recipient and after a period of time in which she brushed off the letter she did write Miklos back. They began to exchange letters about themselves and Miklos communist ideas and all manner of things. Fever at Dawn details the story of Miklos and Lili and how they came to love one another through letters.
Gárdos writes a beautiful tribute to his father and mother, sharing the parts of their story that they never really shared themselves but had preserved in their letters. His mother gave him the letters after his father died and he was moved to honor his father, and mother, in this way. Somehow he also found out details of their experiences during the war that they had not revealed to each other initially. He shares those intense memories with the reader, sobering accounts of what they were forced to do in their effort to survive the mass extermination of the Jews. Fever at Dawn is simply written but a wonderful tribute to the power of hope and love.

I didn't get a chance to review this book before the PDF expired. It seems like it should be a good book though!