Raised Protestant, ten-year-old Ziskla is a hereditary Jew living in Germany in 1938. With Nazi persecution intensifying, her family is able get her on a Kindertransport to Britain. Ziskla can’t believe her mother has sent her away, and feels guilty that her best friend, Bekka, did not get chosen to go as well. In London, she moves in with the Shepards, an Orthodox Jewish family. Parents Amanda and Matthew and teenage Gary are wonderful to Ziskla, now Frances, but this proves a challenge, too: She feels conflicted about religion as she learns more about Judaism, and guilty about loving Amanda, who is so warm, unlike her own mother. The tension of feeling torn between two families—one of whose fate is unknown for much of the story—is beautifully developed in Anne C. Voorhoeve’s arresting novel that spans the years of the war. The story is grounded in characters and relationships, but also in details of time, place, and feeling. Sometimes funny, often deeply moving, one memorable scene after another describes Frances’s life as a refugee on the home front in Britain as she wrestles with questions of family, religion, and identity, and the capacity of humans to be so cruel, and also love so deeply. (Age 13 and older)

Winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder medal for most oustanding children's book in translation.

Escaping Nazi Germany on the kindertransport changes one girl's life forever

At the start of World War II, ten-year-old Franziska Mangold is torn from her family when she boards the kindertransport in Berlin, the train that secretly took nearly 10,000 children out of Nazi territory to safety in England. Taken in by strangers who soon become more like family than her real parents, Frances (as she is now known) courageously pieces together a new life for herself because she doesn't know when or if she'll see her true family again. Against the backdrop of war-torn London, Frances struggles with questions of identity, family, and love, and these experiences shape her into a dauntless, charming young woman.

Originally published in Germany, Anne Voorhoeve's award-winning novel is filled with humor, danger, and romance.