The War I Finally Won

The War I Finally Won is a historical novel for younger readers by the American writer Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, published in 2017. It follows on from The War That Saved My Life.

Ada's clubfoot is finally operated on, and the operation settles one thing for her: she knows she is not what her mother said she was, neither mentally deranged nor damaged in the way she was told, and she is no longer her mother's daughter either. What she does not know is what she is instead.

The Second World War is still going on, and Ada and her brother Jamie are living with their legal guardian, Susan, in a borrowed cottage on the estate of the formidable Lady Thorton, with Lady Thorton and her daughter Maggie in the same crowded house. Life there is tense enough before anything else happens, and then Ruth, a Jewish girl who has come from Germany, moves in, which horrifies the other people living in the cottage.

The war has worse things to bring than that, and as death comes closer to the door, the questions Ada is living with get harder rather than easier: who she is now, how she keeps fighting, and who she will be struggling to save.