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Viking Books for Young Readers
February 2019
On Sale: January 22, 2019
368 pages ISBN: 0670014966 EAN: 9780670014965 Hardcover
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Young Adult
From the author of Blind, a heart-wrenching
coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one
of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge. Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is
fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father
flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to
Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews
without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have
no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a
culture that doesn’t understand them. And always the worry
about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive? Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi,
whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from
malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic
talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in
Warsaw when her family was circus performers. She attends
school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy,
and finds work as a performer at a “gentlemen’s club”
without her father’s knowledge. But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the
Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans
in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they
survive, caught in the crossfire?
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