“If the weight of the world brought you here, you’re not alone in that. No one in this novel crosses alone. That may be the truest thing in it.”
A family torn apart by war. A river that remembers.
You’ve read the war in France. In Poland. In England. You haven’t read this one.
Croatia, 1941. When Nazi soldiers burn the Stanica family’s home and take his parents, fourteen-year-old Dee escapes into a cellar his grandfather dug after the last war. By morning, he is alone.
His father, Yedi—a country doctor—is taken to a fortress where the surgeries he’s ordered to perform are designed to fail. His patients are not dying of disease. They are being murdered by the treatment itself.
His mother, Bridgette, is imprisoned in the same castle, teaching the Nazi commander’s children by day. By night, she maps corridors and memorizes documents—building a record of what happens behind locked doors, evidence for a reckoning she may not live to see.
And Dee, starving in occupied Zagreb, is recruited into the Sparrows—a resistance cell of orphaned children who run sabotage and intelligence beneath soldiers who look right through them.
Small. Common. Everywhere. Nobody looks at a sparrow.
An American pilot, shot from the sky over Croatia, falls into a war with no front lines—where every act of mercy carries a price someone else will pay.
As the Reich moves to erase all evidence of what the fortress contains, four lives converge on a single transport, a single night, and the question that has no right answer: what you are willing to become—and what you will never come back from—to save the people you love.
The train leaves at dawn.
Reviews
“As a fan of historical fiction, specifically of WWII, I thought I knew what I was in for. From the first chapter and the sheer detail and incredible description, I realized that I was going to feel present in the book. I didn’t realize I was signing up for such a ride of emotions and captivations. The storyline is unlike anything else I’ve consumed. Prepare yourself for a trip back in time…”
—Julie R., Beta Reader
“I was deeply invested in the characters and their individual plights from the very first page. Their interwoven experiences propel the broader story, creating a narrative that is both rich and compelling.”
—Jenny R., Early Reader