News stories remind us daily of the migrant crisis throughout the world as people flee their homes for a variety of reasons. Refugee, by Alan Gratz, though written for a middle-grade audience, is a riveting novel for adults as well that draws us into the migrant experience from a child’s perspective.
Three continents. Three different time periods. Three children fleeing their countries.
Alan Gratz joins the past and the present to weave a gripping tale of the harrowing experiences of three children forced from their homes due to war and political unrest.
Josef yearns to celebrate his upcoming bar mitzvah and finally become a man. He just never expected it to be on a ship bound for Cuba, which he and his family board to escape out of Nazi Germany. When the ship is forced to return to Europe, and perhaps certain death, Josef finds himself thrust into adulthood and must make a decision that will determine the survival of his family.
Fast forward to 1994, when Cuba is teeming with food shortages and riots. Teenage Isabel finds herself on a questionable homemade raft. Together with her family and the neighbors next door, they depart for the United States. They just need the raft to hold up, avoid the Coast Guard, pray the sharks don’t get them, and hope that her mother, heavy with child, can survive the journey.
On the other side of the world, in 2015, war tears Syria apart, forcing Mahmoud’s father to seek a safe haven for his family. Amidst gunfire, danger, and the ever-present threat of death, they travel through Turkey and Serbia, enduring hunger, thieves, and prison. Mahmoud and his family continue onward through Austria and finally Germany, where the lives of the three children find a binding tie.
Refugee is a fast-paced, heart-rending story of the strength and courage of children and their valiant efforts, despite all obstacles, to forge a life filled with meaning and purpose.
Veronica Jorge
See you next time on May 22nd!
I killed one of the characters in my novel.
(It was more like two, but I have no qualms about the second one.)
I came up with a death scene I really liked and just had to use it, so someone had to “go.”
Nineteen-year-old Helene languishes in a squalid French prison tormented by questions she cannot answer. Why was she arrested? Who could have made a wrongful accusation against her? And if so, why?
Once in a while you come across a book, that after reading it, makes you pause and think, even marvel because you’ve encountered life from an entirely new perspective. Alison Green Myers’, debut novel, A Bird Will Soar, is such a book.
Winter.
Lifeless, asleep, dead.
All is gone. Lost.
Until the last frost melts away.
As the year draws to an end, preparing to close its final chapter, I think of the beach.
It might seem perfectly normal to those of you living in sunny climates, or to snow bunnies hastening away from the cold. But to those of us in areas that have already seen our first snow, it might sound strange.
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Her choice won the war, but may have cost her everything…
More info →A recipe for disaster: take one total solar eclipse, add two dozen spine-chilling mysteries, and shake the reader until the world ends in Day of the Dark!
More info →One October morning in 1932, Vicente Sorolla entered the white house on the hill and was never seen again. Now, Detective Dori Orihuela witnesses his brutal murder in her nightmares.
More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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