The Night War by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Title: The Night War
Author: Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Maps: Juliet Percival
Publication: Dial Books, hardcover, 2024
Genre: Juvenile Historical Fiction (with a little fantasy)
Setting: 1942 France

Description: Miri and her parents fled Germany for Paris after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), when the Nazis accelerated their persecution of German and Austrian Jews in November 1938. They have settled in a Paris neighborhood that welcomed many Jews and have made friends. But when the Germans occupy France and begin a roundup of Jews, Miri’s parents disappear. As her neighbor is taken, she tells Miri to escape with her two-year-old daughter Nora and hide before the Germans get them too. 

With help from kind strangers, Miri, now renamed Marie, is taken to a French village in the Loire Valley near the Château de Chenonceau, about 121 miles away. While she is sleeping, strangers take Nora and give her to a childless family, and Miri is hidden at a convent school. She could pretend to be Catholic and live in safety where the Nazis are unlikely to find her. But when this intrepid twelve-year-old is asked to undertake a dangerous assignment, she does not hesitate, both because she knows someone has to do it and also she realizes that to find first Nora and then her parents, she needs to know the area. And as she becomes familiar with Château de Chenonceau, she strikes up a strange friendship with its mistress but Miri knows her priority must be an escape plan.

My Impression: Just when you think you have read every type of WWII historical fiction, a gifted writer like Kimberly Brubaker Bradley comes along as she did with The War That Saved My Life, a unique evacuation story that managed to be heartbreaking and funny at the same time (and should have won the Newbery Medal). The sequel brought the realities of war closer to the English village where it was set and was also outstanding. Although her next book was a contemporary, Fighting Words, she is clearly as fascinated by WWII as the rest of us and returned to that time frame in this book. The Night War is not just the story of a girl anxious to be reunited with her parents and to safely deliver toddler Nora to her mother but also one brave enough to defy the Nazis by supporting the Resistance.

Miri has learned the hard way that no one can be trusted, after the persecution of Jews in Berlin and abuse by a French policeman, but it is a nun who rescues her when Miri desperately wonders where she and Nora can hide:

“Oh, you wretched girl!” the person who grabbed me said. It was not a gendarme or a solider. It was a young woman, a Catholic nun wearing a long black habit and white veil.

Now I was caught between two evils. I did not trust Catholic nuns. The Catholic church near the Pletzl had put up a poster that implied all Jews were evil. And once, when I was a small child in Germany, a nun had spat at me on the street – spat on me and my mother, two great globs of mucus along with a venomous glare.

“She’s prejudiced,” Mama had said, wiping my face with her handkerchief. “She’s been taught to hate people who are different from her. Don’t be like that, Miri.”

This message helps Mari when she is on her own and forced to trust strangers. She is smart enough not to confide in the wrong people but one of my favorite parts of the book is her relationship with the elderly nun everyone calls Sister Anchovy because she smells of fish (as Miri grows to value her, she stops using the cruel nickname). This nun is one of the few who knows Miri’s background and she has a secret of her own. Although she is reluctant to put Miri in danger, she is not mobile enough to venture outside in the dark so is forced to accept the girl’s help. The nearby Château de Chenonceau has been taken over by German soldiers but it looks like “a castle straight out of a fairy tale” to Miri. The Château’s secret and the nun's mission are integral parts of the story but is hard to describe without spoiling it. Bradley’s evocation of the Château and its history makes me wish I had visited on my last trip to France.

On Saturday, I heard Justin Trudeau being interviewed on the radio saying how important it is for people to read fiction because it teaches empathy. This is an important book for children as anti-Semitism increases in our country and crazy people deny the Holocaust took place.  As I read this, I was particularly thinking about readers in parts of the country who may not know anyone Jewish - they will find Miri an engaging heroine with whom it is easy to identify. Of course, it is also a suspenseful and exciting story!  And I love a book that has maps as its endpapers.

Source: Library. This is my tenth book for Marg's 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I hope my niece Katherine who also loved Bradley’s earlier books will read this soon so we can discuss it.  We agreed when reading her last book that the author is a kindred spirit and we would like to meet her.