WWII as experienced by a perceptive and wise child. We follow eight-year-old Hania/Ania to a small cellar in the Warsaw Ghetto (where she reads Gone with the Wind in Polish.) At the last minutes she is spirited away to a convent. She survives the fall of Warsaw and flees to Germany with a nun and another Jewish child. there they find temporary but tenuous safety as farm workers. Frequently required to make life or death decisions, the child keeps a cool head and a sense of self-worth which is nothing short of heroic.As gripping as a thriller and beautifully written.
