Editorial Review

“In 1942, 12-year-old Rosetta Wolfson lives with her Jewish family in Montreal, far away from the war in Europe. The Wolfsons take in Isaac Guttman, a young Jewish refugee who fled Germany for Britain, only to later be deported to Canada. Isaac is guarded and slow to trust, but gradually shares parts of his past with Rosetta. Polak’s novel introduces an often-overlooked facet of the Holocaust: that Britain expelled German nationals (Nazis as well as Jews and those rescued in the Kindertransport), shipping them to internment camps in Canada and Australia. Isaac is grateful to have been taken in by the Wolfsons, but that doesn’t prevent him from feeling guilt over the fates of his family members and experiencing anti- Semitism in Canada. Secondary plots involving Rosetta’s efforts at public speaking, and her gradual realization that her best friend harbors anti-Semitic views, are also well handled. A strong family story;
pair with Lucy Strange’s Our Castle By the Sea (2019) for another look at wartime expulsion of Germans.”
—Booklist Online