AustLit

'Sometimes it's good to be wild.

'Sometimes you have to be wild.

'When the Russian Army marches into East Prussia at the end of the war, the Wolf family must flee. Liesl, Otto and their baby sister Mia find themselves lost and alone, in a blizzard, in the middle of a war zone. Liesl has promised Mama that she will keep her brother and sister safe.

'But sometimes, to survive, you have to do bad things. Dangerous things. Wild things.

'Sometimes to survive, you must become a wolf.' (Publication summary)

'Award-winning writer Katrina Nannestad transports us to Russia and the Great Patriotic War and into the life of Sasha, a soldier at only six years old ...

'Wood splinters and Mama screams and the nearest soldier seizes her roughly by the arms. My sister pokes her bruised face out from beneath the table and shouts, 'Run, Sasha! Run!'

'So I run. I run like a rabbit.

'It's spring, 1942. The sky is blue, the air is warm and sweet with the scent of flowers.

'And then everything is gone.

'The flowers, the proud geese, the pretty wooden houses, the friendly neighbours. Only Sasha remains.

'But one small boy, alone in war-torn Russia, cannot survive.

'One small boy without a family cannot survive.

'One small boy without his home cannot survive.

'What that small boy needs is an army.' (Publication summary)

'The powerful new novel from master storyteller Katrina Nannestad.

'I don't want to remember the truck, or the night I was taken, or the family I left behind. I am not a sad Polish girl. I am a good and happy German girl.

'I am. I am. I am.

'It's the Second World War and Himmler's Lebensborn Program is in full flight when eight-year-old Zofia Ulinski is kidnapped by the Germans. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the other Polish children taken from their families and robbed of their names, their language, their heritage.

'But when Zofia is adopted into a wealthy and loving German family, it is easier, it is safer to bury her past, deep down, so everything is forgotten. Until the Polish boy arrives.

'And the past comes back to haunt her.' (Publication summary)