Blitzkrieg
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
An intriguing and thought-provoking WWII novel inspired by real events from the international award-winning author Brian Falkner!
In Nazi-ruled Germany, Joe St. George is forced to watch as the country is divided around him by fear and hate. Joe thinks he and his family are safe, but when his father disappears one night, everything changes. Suddenly Joe and his mother are suspects of the state, but for what, Joe has no idea. They plan their escape from Germany, even though it means leaving Joe’s father behind. However, Joe and his mom are separated before they make it out, and he is forced to go on without her.
Eventually Joe in arrives London but quickly realizes he’s not free of the Nazis. Since Joe’s escape, Hitler has been marching west, and London is under constant attack from the skies. Desperate to find his parents, Joe begins to dig into what happened back home. But the truth is a lot more complicated and dangerous than Joe ever imagined, and soon he is recruited by MI5 and given a deadly mission that will put him in the very center of Hitler’s ruthless reign. From vital convoys across the frozen North Atlantic, to the terror of the Blitz, to the shadowy world of the French Resistance, just how far will Joe have to go to save his family ... and himself?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This immersive, high-stakes WWII spy novel centers protagonist Joseph "Katipo" St. George, a 12-year-old child of diplomat parents—a British father and New Zealander mother. In 1938 Berlin, Joe is familiar with the displays of the Hitler Youth (his best friend's uncle is one of Hitler's top aides) and encounters antisemitic violence. After the Gestapo takes his father, Joe's mother facilitates escape for herself and for Joe, giving her son an assumed identity—and suggesting that there's more to his parents than he previously realized. Joe is sent to safety on a New Zealand farm but stows away on a naval ship to London, depicted in a rousing 1941-set segment. There, the mystery around his mother's London whereabouts leads to life alongside "Blitz rat" children and covert operations of his own. Falkner (The Project) intersperses plot-driven third-person chapters with first-person excerpts from the fictional protagonist's memoirs. Though complications sometimes bog down the pacing en route to a cliffhanger ending, it's a historically grounded novel of intrigue alongside familial and personal change. Protagonists cue as white. Ages 12–up.
