By H. M. Bouwman
Neal Porter / Holiday House, 2025
308 pages
978-0-8234-5775-5
Ages 9-14
In 1941, Peggy’s modest world revolves around her parents, cousin and best friend Delia, and neighbor friends who live within walking distance of her family’s rural Iowa farm. But lately everything seems to be changing. Delia has been diagnosed with leukemia and given six months to live, but no one will tell her the truth about her own health. And with Jewish refugees—including an attractive boy named Gunther and a chess-playing former professor, both of whom have lost their families—moving into the nearby Scattergood hostel, the faraway war seems to have arrived in Peggy’s backyard. Set over the course of about six months, this profoundly pleasurable novel is remarkable in its depiction of complex human emotions and motivations. Peggy (white) convinces herself that if only she can find the right medical information, or talk to the right person, or pray hard enough, or write Delia enough uplifting letters, she can save her cousin’s life. She is mathematically brilliant and mature for her age (12), but she is also realistically naïve and ignorant of the wider world; she has a surface-level understanding of the trauma and grief that Gunther and the Professor are experiencing, and her sometimes-uncomfortable interactions with them help her to look beyond her own pain and experiences. Nuanced, heartrending, and quietly astonishing, this is the coming-of-age novel at its best. ©2025 Cooperative Children’s Book Center