Ste­fan and Mar­i­on Hes­s’s hap­py child­hood was shat­tered in 1944. Torn from their home in Ams­ter­dam, the six-year-old twins and their par­ents were deport­ed to a place their moth­er called ​“a dying hell” — the infa­mous con­cen­tra­tion camp at Bergen-Belsen.

Insep­a­ra­ble is the vivid account of one fam­i­ly’s strug­gle to sur­vive the Holo­caust. When caught in child­ish mis­chief, Ste­fan and Mar­i­on ran from SS sol­diers, mak­ing a game of see­ing who could get clos­est to the guard tow­ers before being warned he would be shot. They wit­nessed their father beat­en beyond recog­ni­tion, dodged straf­ing war­planes, and some­how sur­vived in a place where ​“the chil­dren looked for bread between the corpses.” Above all, this is the unfor­get­table sto­ry of a young moth­er and father who were will­ing to sac­ri­fice every­thing for their children.

From the Hess­es’ pros­per­ous pre-war life in Ger­many to their des­per­ate ride in a bul­let-strafed box­car through the rub­ble of the col­laps­ing Third Reich, Faris Cas­sell weaves Ste­fan and Mar­i­on’s per­son­al mem­o­ries and his­tor­i­cal details into a grip­ping nar­ra­tion of this hero­ic fam­i­ly’s ordeal.