Traitor
A Novel of World War II
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Amanda McCrina's Traitor is a tightly woven YA thrill ride exploring political conflict, deep-seated prejudice, and the terror of living in a world where betrayal is a matter of life or death.
“Alive with detail and vivid with insight, Traitor is an effortlessly immersive account of a shocking and little-known moment in the turbulent history of Poland and Ukraine—and ironically, a piercing and bittersweet story of unflinching loyalty. I think Tolya has left my heart a little damaged forever.” —Elizabeth Wein, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Code Name Verity and The Enigma Game
Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwów from Germany, the city remains a battleground between resistance fighters and insurgent armies, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine.
Seventeen-year-old Tolya Korolenko is half Ukrainian, half Polish, and he joined the Soviet Red Army to keep himself alive and fed. When he not-quite-accidentally shoots his unit's political officer in the street, he's rescued by a squad of Ukrainian freedom fighters. They might have saved him, but Tolya doesn't trust them. He especially doesn't trust Solovey, the squad's war-scarred young leader, who has plenty of secrets of his own.
Then a betrayal sends them both on the run. And in a city where loyalty comes second to self-preservation, a traitor can be an enemy or a savior—or sometimes both.
This title has common core connections.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This riveting WWII novel starts with a literal bang when Anatoliy "Tolya" Korolenko, a half-Polish, half-Ukrainian 17-year-old orphan, shoots and kills an officer in his own division of the Soviet Red Army. This rash act puts Tolya in the path of Solovey, the nom de guerre of Aleksey Kobryn, leader of a Ukrainian paramilitary squad called UPA (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia). McCrina (Blood Oath) illuminates the recent history of Galicia, a much-fought-over region claimed by both Poles and Ukrainians and occupied alternately by Germans and Russians in the mid-20th century. Crisp writing plunges readers into a brutal world rife with deception, betrayal (including scenes of torture), and occasional glints of compassion. Tolya's tale, relayed in the third person, takes place in 1944, while Aleksey's first-person narrative starts in 1941, when the then-19-year-old attempts to rescue his father, a Ukrainian nationalist leader, from prison. To dig much deeper into specifics would detract from the pleasure of this novel's hairpin twists, which begin early and continue to the final pages. An intricate depiction of a region whose complex history is likely to be unfamiliar to many in the United States. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Good read, pay attention
I really enjoyed the book overall. The author is clever in the way that she intertwines two characters stories by alternating back and forth between two time frames. There are lots of characters and groups to keep track of and it got confusing at times, so pay attention. Author does a good job bringing it all together at the end but the ending was a bit abrupt.