“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.“ To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee

Surviving high school is tough. Navigating the politics of the classroom and lunch room is hard enough, and joining a new school part way through even harder. Consider then that you move to a new school when you are homeless and living out of a van with your little sister and mum and dad. Welcome to Abby’s new life.

The book gently unfolds how Abby and her family find themselves in this situation. Abby’s mum was a teacher and had an affair with a colleague, which was discovered and made very public. At the same time that Abby’s mum loses her job for her indiscretion, her father is made redundant when his employer goes bankrupt. Sometimes you can be just a few paychecks from poverty. When that income stream is lost, savings can quickly be eroded. And then things get really bad.

Without family or other support, Abby and her family move north to Minnesota to make a new start there. While the children go to school in the day, the parents look for jobs and hunt out what help they can from the community. For supper they go to the Salvation Army soup kitchen and in the weekend the church hosts a similar lunch, but rather than making them feel needy and helpless, the church lunch makes them feel like guests and offers more support. This for me was an important distinction: when these people have already lost everything, the church lunch helped them to keep or regain their dignity.

Abby has to work hard to keep up the pretence that she has a normal home life (indeed, a home). She meets some new friends who are warm and welcoming, and well-to-do. The contrast between what they have and how they live is stark with Abby’s reality. She struggles with their easily given generosity, but when she sees that it isn’t just directed at her, that they share things with each other, she is gracious in accepting.

But how long can she maintain the pretence? And will her world come crashing down again if anyone finds out?

This book was touching and thought-provoking without becoming schmaltzy. It has the classic theme of trying to endure high school with the elevated emotion and worries of a person struggling with abject poverty.

After reading the book I did some research. Recent statistics in the U.K. state that 80,000 families (including 120,000 children) are homeless in the U.K. They will be housed in temporary accommodation, often a B&B, but without any security as to how long they can stay. Approximately half of these families have working parents, but they can not escape their circumstances because of the high cost of private rents, the freeze in housing benefit and the scarcity of social housing. The book has made me ask myself, how can I do more? A question which I asked myself after reading Becoming by Michelle Obama also. I’m picking up on a theme…

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“A woman is like a tea bag. It’s only when she’s in hot water that you realize how strong she is.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Opening with a punch, this book starts with Sarah crouched in the footwell of a car and her mother slumped over the wheel, a bullet in the back of her head. Orphaned at 15, Sarah’s priority is to escape from the border guards that have just killed her mother and get herself to safety.

Set at the eve of WW2, Sarah and her mother attempt to flee into Switzerland. Already pushed out of their home in Berlin, Jews living in Austria are no longer safe from the wave of National Socialism that has taken over Germany in the preceding years and the spread of its power into neighbouring countries. Sarah has been schooled by her mother in theatrical arts which, coupled with her blond hair, allows her to masquerade as an Aryan and helps her to survive.

Sneaking her way onto a boat bound for Switzerland, she rescues a mysterious gentleman, Herr Haller. Putting at risk her own safety, saves him from trouble with the border guards at the dock through her quick wit and bravery and together they dodge their way back into Germany. A German scientist is threatening to develop a nuclear bomb, which would have catastrophic consequences. Herr Haller convinces Sarah to infiltrate a Nazi school, which is grooming the female monsters of the future, so that she can befriend the scientists daughter and gain access to this lab. Sarah becomes the Orphan Monster Spy.

This is a fast paced book, full of action, but it skilfully roots itself in the horror of what Sarah and her mother have endured during the rise of National Socialism. Sarah, though seemingly unshakeable on the outside, has packed all of her terrible experiences into a box down in her soul, first as a means to keep from being overwhelmed by the weight of it all, and later as a source of power to overcome what gets put in her path. Using Sarah’s gymnastic skills as a metaphor, “commit to the move” is a refrain which comes back again and again, giving the message that you have to do something wholeheartedly and with all your effort to succeed. Timidity will lead to failure. Eloquently written, and with real heart, there was nothing timid about this debut novel. I’m looking forward to sequel.