The Dog in the Wood
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
When the Russians come, where do you go? Fritz loves his vegetable garden. His tomatoes are delicious, he's attentive to the asparagus, and he remembers how to keep slugs off the strawberries. But his tranquil life on the family farm is about to end—the Russians are near, Hitler has died, and known Nazi sympathizers like the Friedrich family brace for the Bolsheviks to take over their town. Local German supporters of the Bolshevik regime seize the Friedrich farm in the name of Communism, forcing Fritz's family to flee to the distant house of his grandmother, Oma Clara. Life there for Fritz is horrible, made even worse when Communists arrest his mother and Lech, the Polish farmhand who has tended the Friedrich land, for hiding weapons. Though there is no evidence to support the accusation, Gertrude and Lech are taken away, and Fritz commits to finding where they are imprisoned. Despite the boy's heroic efforts, the story ends with one of the war's ambiguities: that Lech and Gertrude may not return home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ten-year-old Fritz lives in a small village in eastern Germany toward the end of WWII. His father died years earlier in the war, leaving Fritz with his younger sister, mother, a Polish farmhand, and his paternal grandparents (his Grandpa Karl is a Nazi sympathizer). When news reaches the family that the Germans have lost, Fritz's grandparents hang themselves, and sensitive Fritz takes solace in tending to the vegetables in his family's garden until Russian soldiers arrive. Fritz struggles with his identity and what to believe are the Russians truly the enemies his grandfather believed them to be? when he befriends Mikhail, a Russian commander stationed at his farm. Things take a turn for the worse when the family is forced to move in with Fritz's maternal grandmother in another village after their farmland is redistricted, and his mother is arrested for purported weapon possession. With nuanced characters (Russian and German alike) and a cautiously hopeful ending, Schr der's well-crafted debut, inspired by her father's childhood in Germany, is especially attuned to her protagonist's internal conflicts and worries, and reveals alarming truths about the far-reaching effects of war. Ages 10 14.
