Stranger on the Home Front is officially out! A middle grade novel set in WWI California, it tells the story of a mixed-race South Asian girl trying to navigate new revelations about her father’s involvement in the Hindu-German Conspiracy and keep her friendship with her German-American BFF alive as nationalism rises.
You can buy it in paperback and hardcover at the following links:
and at Amazon below:
Due to the impact of COVID19 on publishing, Stranger on the Home Front has been pushed back to Spring 2021 instead of being released September this year. You can preorder it here for any kid in your life who is interested in historical fiction, WWI, or the history of the Indian-American community.
Disclaimer: I received an ecopy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This is the heartbreaking though not ultimately tragic story of Margot Allen, a vicar’s daughter in 1919 who accidentally became pregnant at sixteen and whose son is now being raised as her younger brother. Meanwhile, the father, formerly Missing in Action in WWI, returns, and nineteen-year-old Margot still hasn’t told him what really happened or why she stopped speaking to him. Over Christmas, she gets a second chance to determine the course of her life, but can she overcome her fear to tell her maybe-ex-boyfriend that he’s a father, and can she reveal the truth and raise her own child without irreparably hurting her mother–who lost her own baby a few years ago?
There’s a lot of exposition that could probably have been handled more smoothly, though some of it is necessary as major events in the storyline took place years before the book starts. Margot is an unusual YA protagonist. She doesn’t have any big dreams or strong interests even before the depression that comes with her unwanted pregnancy and the trauma of giving up her child. She’s pretty and social and her intelligence is mostly ignored by others, but she doesn’t stress it herself. She was a child before she had her baby and her new adult self is a mess of hurt; her pain is her defining feature. She “funks” telling her boyfriend when he first returns, and is trying to figure out if she dares try again.
But she’s very real despite the vagueness of her character in many ways. The novel totally immerses you in Margot’s head over the course of a fateful Christmas break, and doesn’t provide any easy answers to Margot’s dilemmas. Nor does her brother Stephen have a closed arc–his dissatisfaction and trauma after his wartime service is left open, as many things in life are. Margot’s lover Harry is almost too good to be true, but he has complex feelings of his own. The ending is neither completely happy nor hopeless; it’s a bit abrupt but fits with the realness and messiness of the whole experience. I was crying by the end of the book. Despite some of the overly expository and simple style of writing, it was incredibly moving.
Nice twisty Jacobean psychological thriller, based on the real case of the Overbury murder, with fun unreliable narration. I deducted a star because of the flatness of one of the characters, who’s just too cold and evil to be interesting after the deception is revealed, but the author really got me with the red herring villain. Even the sympathetic character is marred by stalkerishness and impulsivity, but you nonetheless feel bad for the situation they find themselves in. Enjoyed the character of canny King James I as well. Some of the language feels too modern (there’s a usage of “lynching,” which was named after a specific person long after the story). But I was gripped and could barely put the book down.
(I am using gender neutral language because there are two narrators, “Him” and “Her,” and revealing which one is lying would be a spoiler).
STRANGER ON THE HOME FRONT, a middle grade novel dealing with the impact of the Hindu-German Conspiracy Trial and the nationalism of WWI-era America, will appear from Jolly Fish Press on September 1, 2020. I love my half-Punjabi protagonist, Margaret, who slowly learns to stand up for her beliefs, and her German-American best friend Bettina who’s dealing with her own issues that Margaret can’t see. And of course, it was a pleasure to delve into a less famous aspect of the Indian independence cause.
You can preorder from Amazon here. Here’s the summary:
It’s 1916, and Europe is at war. Yet Margaret Singh, living an entire ocean away in California, is unaffected. Then the United States enters the war against Germany. Suddenly the entire country is up in arms against those who seem “un-American” or speak against the country’s ally, Great Britain. When Margaret’s father is arrested for his ties to the Ghadar Party, a group of Indian immigrants seeking to win India’s independence from Great Britain, Margaret’s own allegiances are called into question. But she was born in America and America itself fought to be freed from British rule. So what does it even mean to be American?
I have had the privilege of reading this book in successive drafts, and it has only gotten better.
Based on the story of the Women’s Battalion of Death in WWI Russia, it follows Katya, an officer’s daughter who volunteers for the regiment. Amber Lough, the author, is a veteran of the Iraq War and writes clear, compelling battle sequences as well as fleshing out the characters so that their travails break your heart. The friendship between Katya and her buddy Masha, as well as Katya’s relationship with her deserter brother Maxim, stands out as extremely well done, and the historical figure of the regiment’s leader and founder, Maria Bochkareva, becomes a compelling character as well. I had a few quibbles with some of the political setting in terms of the Russian Revolution (as usual, not enough screen-time for non-Bolshevik socialists), but the character of Sergei, a Bolshevik activist who wants Katya to desert for both personal and political reasons, was also very well done.
The ending and the last line broke my heart, as they should have.
I had issues with the book recommendations at the end–Richard Pipes wrote the single worst book on the revolution that I have had the misfortune of reading, and it is recommended here–but Lough’s research is strong. Katya’s political confusion is realistic for the era and her age, although I wasn’t quite sold on some of her contradictory actions.
I want a sequel very badly but also can’t bear the thought of these characters living through the brutal Russian Civil War, so I would say Lough did a great job in both telling a compelling story and attaching me to the characters.
This is another short novel in the mode of Wein’s earlier Firebird, following an East European female pilot in WWII. In this case, the protagonist is a Polish girl, Kristina, who serves as a liaison pilot in the Polish Air Force and escapes in a small plane when her airstrip is taken over and her brother killed by the German army.
Except there’s a passenger she didn’t expect. Julian, an eleven-year-old Jewish orphan, has snuck onboard her plane and is determined to get to England, sometimes coming into conflict with Kristina, who wants to join the rest of the Polish Air Force in France. Julian is probably the most vivid character in the book, resilient, a bit sneaky, confident, and ultimately very, very young.
With a combination of Julian’s language skills and Kristina’s flying abilities, they cross much of Europe, encountering a variety of people along the way, from Hungarians who help them on the supposition that Julian is an Austrian Boy Scout to an Italian who tries to rape Kristina. Ultimately they make it to France, but will Julian get to England as his murdered father wanted him to?
Compared to Firebird, there was no first-person narration or clever structure, but it was a lot more plausible (no Anastasia myth here!). I liked that Kristina and Julian aren’t instant buddies, but have a hard-earned friendship across cultures and age difference after flying across Europe together. They each have to rely on the other for the skills they don’t have, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
I also liked that this book brought attention to the women who fought for Poland in WWII and the Polish war effort generally. An afterword notes the real-life contributions of Polish exiles in the war effort.
This book was printed specially for dyslexic readers, which involved changing some of the Polish spellings. Lwów becomes Lvov, Krystyna becomes Kristina. This was a little distracting (especially having Polish characters using the Russian name Lvov) but it was probably necessary for the format.
This novella was written specifically for teenage dyslexic readers, so it uses more dyslexic-friendly language, length, and formatting, while diving into some tough subject matter and using sophisticated narrative strategies. The book is framed as the written testimony of Nastia, a Soviet pilot in World War II who is accused of treason. She gives an account of her wartime experiences and the incident that led her to be accused.
A “the lady or the tiger” ending leaves readers uncertain as to Nastia’s eventual fate. Is she shot as a traitor or released? This also subtly gives the readers a clue that life in the USSR is not always as Nastia (the loyal daughter of Communist Party members) makes it out to be.
There’s a lot of information on the female pilots of World War II (Nastia is not a bomber pilot or Night Witch, but rather a fighter pilot). Wein clearly outlines her sources for different parts of the story in an author’s note. She is also about to release a nonfiction book on the pilots called A Thousand Sisters.
Part of the plot goes back to the Russian Civil War (which Nastia’s parents and her mentor the Chief participated in) and the fate of the Romanov sisters. I think the story would have been stronger without the somewhat implausible Romanov link, but I also think a lot of young readers will enjoy that aspect and after all, the book is directed at them.
The Chief and Nastia are great characters–indeed, characterization is a major strong point of the book. The Chief is a tough woman who wears her elaborate makeup as a shield and rebuilds her life over and over again. I read her as asexual or aromantic (or both) because of comments she makes about how loyalty has meant more to her than love in her life.
Nastia is an enthusiastic and idealistic young person. She worries, however, that her courage is not sufficient. She also experiences no romances over the course of the story, but in her case, this is less about fundamental aspects of her character and more about the circumstances she finds herself in. She is unquestioning of the Soviet system (and may even be playing up her loyalty to it, given the circumstances in which she writes her account). She deals with period-typical sexism, from being turned away from a recruiting office in the early days of the war to her otherwise supportive father not wanting her to learn to fly. Ultimately, she faces a dangerous choice–should she return to Soviet territory after ending up behind enemy lines?
The climax of the story was a little bit rushed, after being foreshadowed in the first pages, and I wanted a bit more out of those scenes. There were also a few details I thought were implausible, such as the Romanov link at the end and the letter Nastia’s father is able to send her from besieged Leningrad telling her of the horrors of the blockade–surely a letter from a besieged city to a serving airwoman would have been censored?
However, the novella as a whole is very strong. Wein commits to the quasi-epistolary nature of the novella, showing everything from Nastia’s point of view while leaving room around the edges for the things Nastia wouldn’t say or think. The reader does have to go in with some knowledge of the Soviet Union because of how deeply the novella is in Nastia’s point of view, which might be an issue for younger readers.
The details of wartime are fascinatingly portrayed and the author’s note is highly informative. Ultimately, I enjoyed this novella most for the characters, and found myself hoping that somehow against the odds, Nastia would be acquitted. The fact that we never find out her fate is daring for a YA/MG novel, but the author of Code Name Verity has never shied away from narrative sophistication or tearing up readers’ hearts.
This is a really fun murder mystery/adventure set in 16th-century Canterbury as a 15 year old Christopher Marlowe, the future playwright, struggles to build a future beyond what his abusive father (the cobbler of the title) envisions for him. Oh, and someone’s just murdered the older scholar friend who gave him a window into a new world.
Enter Tom Watson (a real historical figure, though used fictitiously) who is also trying to solve the murder. Unfortunately, this puts both Kit and Watson in grave danger. Meanwhile, Kit is experiencing a secret first love with another boy and negotiating his relationships with his mother and younger sisters, all excellently characterized. Throw in a mysterious Greek book, a couple of murder attempts, and an archbishop, and you have a great mystery/coming of age tale.
This features the same historical main character as Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age books Ink and Steel and others, but stands alone and is straight-up historical fiction rather than historical fantasy as those are. Still, if you’d like more of Marlowe’s fictional adventures after this, check those out!
Spoilery quibbles below:
My two quibbles with this book–one, the religious conflicts that drive the murder plot could have been more fleshed out, and two, toward the end Kit does something SO STUPID-failing to ask for help from someone who’s shown himself helpful when he’s in over his head-that I almost couldn’t believe it. This is explained as a result of his father’s abuse, but I wish that decision and its motives had been more fleshed out as well…but this is an excellent read
Maya Chhabra 
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