Threaded throughout the narrative we are taken to events in the year 1963 involving Anna’s daughter, Suzanne, an amiable, talkative 19-year-old on a holiday in Greece from America. He ‘magnanimously’ allows the family to stay but Anna is constantly on edge in case her real identity is let slip to this Visitor from Hell. Working together as doctor and nurse they tend the sick and wounded but one day the home has an invasion of its own when a Nazi officer decides to take it over.
While living with this family, Anna falls in love with a member of the household, Alexander, also a doctor. As the book’s title suggests, she is hidden by posing as a nurse, pretending to be a Greek Orthodox Christian, attending services, wearing a crucifix and generally giving all outward appearances of being of the Christian faith. Anna, a vibrant, young Sephardic Jewess from Salonika who is qualified as a doctor, is sent by her father to close friends, a Greek Orthodox family in Athens, in an endeavour to keep her from harm’s way.
Against this background Karen Batshaw has set her fictional novel. 87% of Greek Jews were murdered Salonika lost 97% of its Greek Jews.
Greece has the sad distinction of being home to the largest percentage of Jews annihilated in Europe. According to author, Karen Batshaw’s note at the end of "Hidden In Plain Sight," during the World War II Nazi occupation of Greece, 80% of Greek industry and 90% of ports, roads, railways and bridges were destroyed, 25% of all forests were decimated and over 1,000 villages were burned to the ground 40,000 people died of starvation in Athens alone.
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