Readers will need the Kleenex for this one.
The bubonic plague brings added misery and death to European Jews.
Natan is the 17-year-old son of a Jewish ragman in 14th-century Strasbourg. His family ekes out a precarious living in a city rampant with anti-Semitism. When the bubonic plague races across Europe, the Jews are at even greater risk than usual, accused of poisoning wells and causing the deaths. Natan has fallen in love with Elena, the Christian daughter of his father’s business associate—a forbidden love. When he witnesses town hoodlums throwing a dead cat into a well, he is murdered. His soul, now an ibbur, enters the body of Hans, a Christian who works for Elena’s father. (An ibbur “occurs when a righteous person’s soul takes up residence in another’s body.”) Natan is now tasked with trying to save the Jews of Strasbourg. He desperately tries to enlist the help of the Ammeister, head of the city council, but to no avail. Elena tries equally hard to understand that her love inhabits the body of a boy she does not like. Wiseman tells her tragic tale alternating the voices of Natan and Elena. It is a heart-rending tale based on actual events, which saw the Jews of the city almost entirely murdered by being burned alive.
Readers will need the Kleenex for this one. (author’s note, glossary) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-716-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers...
A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields.
The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for; he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. Arn does what he must to survive—and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Chorn-Pond, in real life, has spoken eloquently (and fluently) on the influence he's gained by learning English; this prose diminishes both his struggle and his story.
Though it lacks references or suggestions for further reading, Arn's agonizing story is compelling enough that many readers will seek out the history themselves. (preface, author's note) (Historical fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-173093-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful.
January 1945: as Russians advance through East Prussia, four teens’ lives converge in hopes of escape.
Returning to the successful formula of her highly lauded debut, Between Shades of Gray (2011), Sepetys combines research (described in extensive backmatter) with well-crafted fiction to bring to life another little-known story: the sinking (from Soviet torpedoes) of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff. Told in four alternating voices—Lithuanian nurse Joana, Polish Emilia, Prussian forger Florian, and German soldier Alfred—with often contemporary cadences, this stints on neither history nor fiction. The three sympathetic refugees and their motley companions (especially an orphaned boy and an elderly shoemaker) make it clear that while the Gustloff was a German ship full of German civilians and soldiers during World War II, its sinking was still a tragedy. Only Alfred, stationed on the Gustloff, lacks sympathy; almost a caricature, he is self-delusional, unlikable, a Hitler worshiper. As a vehicle for exposition, however, and a reminder of Germany’s role in the war, he serves an invaluable purpose that almost makes up for the mustache-twirling quality of his petty villainy. The inevitability of the ending (including the loss of several characters) doesn’t change its poignancy, and the short chapters and slowly revealed back stories for each character guarantee the pages keep turning.
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful. (author’s note, research and sources, maps) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-16030-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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