Jennifer Coburn's first historical novel, Cradles of the Reich, is a well-researched chronicle of Nazi Germany's attempt to breed "racially pure" babies to counteract the country's falling birth rate. The brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, the Lebensborn ("Fount of Life") program established maternity homes for "worthy" women in need of assistance in childbirth—generally unwed mothers, wives or widows of German soldiers who met the physical standards the Nazis prized (i.e., were young, blond, blue-eyed and physically fit). It quickly devolved into a system whereby women were treated no better than breeding stock. The babies of unwed mothers were given to high-ranking officers' wives to raise, "mothers-in-training" were kept onsite to service (and hopefully be impregnated by) high-ranking officers, and children of Aryan-looking ...