The Blood Years
A devastating novel based on the author’s grandmother’s experiences sheds light on the trials of Romanian Jews during the Holocaust. In the late 1930s, Frederieke lives in Czernowitz with her depressed mother; glamorous sister Astra; and loving, protective grandfather Opa. Rieke adores and is exasperated by her older sister in equal measures; she often tags along with or covers for Astra when Astra meets up with her philandering lover, Marcel, a doctor. Meanwhile, the war arrives in their beautiful, cosmopolitan city. The Soviet occupation leads to a tightly controlled food supply and unwelcome divides as neighbors spy and report on one another. When the Nazis take over, Rieke and her family are ordered into a crowded ghetto with other Jews, but in a stroke of luck they avoid deportation because Marcel’s medical skills are needed at a local hospital. Life under Nazi rule is dangerous and uncertain, and Rieke faces extreme hardships: A man who offers the family shelter and later brings them food secretly and repeatedly sexually assaults her as “payment,” and her chronic cough, which she suspects is tuberculosis, eventually requires hospitalization. In the final moments of the story, Rieke makes a critical decision about her future, providing a welcome sense of hope after so much suffering. ©2023 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 14 and older
Age Range:
Grades 9-12 (Age 14 and older)
Format:
Novel
Subjects:
20th Century
Anti-Semitism
Discrimination and Prejudice
Economic Hardship and Poverty
Historical Fiction
Holocaust
Jewish People
Oppression
Sexual Assault and Rape
Siblings
Trauma
World War II
Diversity subject:
Jewish
Publishers:
Balzer + Bray, HarperCollins
Publish Year: 2023
Pages: 390
ISBN: 9780062990853
CCBC Location: Fiction, Arnold