Excellent Novel: The Children's War

[Sequoia]

The Children's War
by MONIQUE CHARLESWORTH

Ilse, a sensitive German girl of mixed parentage (a Jewish father and a Christian mother), is 13 when WWII erupts in this moving, morally nuanced and accomplished historical novel. Terrified that Ilse will be discovered as half-Jewish, her mother, Lore, sends her away to Morocco to live with Ilse's charming Uncle Willy. In her attentive, lively uncle, Ilse finds a father figure she could never have in her real father, Otto, who is a passionate but myopic Bolshevik and ineffectual parent. But soon France is invaded by Germany, Willy enrolls in the French Foreign Legion and Ilse is sent to her father, who is now living in Paris.

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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400040094/qid=1098724137/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-9945761-6662552

This story was so wonderful I read it all day on Saturday as it rained and my house sat around waiting to be cleaned. Of all the war novels I've read (and I've read plenty) this is very near the top. The events in Hamburg when the allies flew over are just horrific. Little children grow up quickly into little adults.