Bluebird

Two girls, two gripping perspectives of wartime and postwar Germany: Bluebird explores less familiar literary territory through the eyes of those who have been oblivious to the atrocities surrounding their sheltered, privileged world.

In February of 1945, 16-year-old Inge is the vivacious daughter of a prominent doctor active in the Nazi regime. She spends her days taking joyrides in her father's car and attending League of German Girls meetings, where the League leader tells the girls that "a baby for Hitler... a good German baby, is the greatest gift a girl can give to her Führer." But Inge's mother whisks the family away to a remote family lodge and Inge's world of pretty clothes and flirtations ends abruptly.

In August 1946, a German girl named Eva arrives at a New York Quaker home serving as a program center for refugees. Eva is laser focused on delivering justice to an infamous Nazi whose monstrous wartime experiments are still in demand. Almost the moment she steps off the boat, Eva realizes that she is being followed, but is it by American secret agents? Soviets? Or Nazis?

The young women's points of view alternate by chapter, their narratives coming ever closer until they are one in this heart-rending novel by Sharon Cameron (The Light in Hidden Places; The Dark Unwinding). Featuring more hairpin turns in plot than the route the borrowed convertible takes to escape Nazis (or Soviets, or Americans), Bluebird is enthralling from page one all the way through to the author's note. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

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