THE NIGHT SPARROW

Sanders’ historical novel follows a band of female Soviet snipers on the Eastern Front during World War II.

The story starts with Jewish Soviet student turned soldier Elena Bruskina, who’s wounded at one of the final German defenses outside Berlin in 1945 before being reassigned to a role as an interpreter due to her university study of German. Readers then delve into Elena’s backstory, starting with her time in the tense, terrifying Minsk ghetto in 1941, where Nazis terrorize the remaining Jewish people in the occupied city. Elena joins a band of partisans, then enlists with one of the new all-female sniper units in the Red Army. Chapters alternate between those recounting Elena’s training and bonding with the other women in her unit, many of them also Jewish, and her work as an interpreter in occupied Berlin, attached to a unit working to ascertain Adolf Hitler’s whereabouts or confirm his death. Sanders has a talent for sensory detail, as when noting what the snipers use to protect their feet (“the bottom of her left foot ached from blisters because of a wrinkle in her foot wrapping”) and the conifer tea they drink to prevent scurvy. Sanders writes with an appealing economy: Some emotionally intense scenes, as when Elena and her unit occupy an intact German house and try on dresses for the first time in years, are short, which allows them to hit hard without slowing the narrative. It’s an unflinching story as well; characters witness and experience the sexual violence and exploitation that infested both armies. A long and detailed but conversational author’s note closes the book, presenting Sanders’ research and noting which parts of the novel are based on actual events. Overall, this book will appeal to aficionados of historical fiction with its compelling action-filled set pieces, unblinking depictions of ferocity and savagery on the front lines, and exquisitely rendered portrayals of lives under extraordinary strain.

An enthralling war story that doesn’t miss a step on its march to Berlin.