For Samuel, that painful pilgrimage was inevitable. His roots had been amputated the moment he’d set foot on the Kindertransport train.
This novel is about two immigrant children growing up decades apart undergoing the trauma of upheaval from country, home, and family. The tale begins in 1938 with the Adlers living in Vienna as the Nazi’s are becoming more powerful and antisemitic policies are in effect. Rudolph, a family physician, and his wife Rachel, who teaches music to supplement their income, try their best to suppress their fears, to keep Samuel, their five-year-old son from understanding the enormity of what is happening. An observant, mature boy who possesses a rare musical genius, particularly on the violin, he cannot be shielded from the violence that is being unleashed upon their Jewish community, no one can. On the night of November 9th, during Kristallnacht (the November pogroms), their course is set, desperate to save her family Rachel knows her only choice is to send Samuel with other children on the Kindertransport train bound for England, despite her fear of the family splitting further apart. Making sure he can at least take his violin aboard; she tells him as soon as his dad gets home, they will be reunited in the pretty country of England and that she loves him. It is with great sacrifice and pain that she sees her only child off, forever. So begins his new life without his family, and the rest is a nightmarish history.
2019 Seven-year-old Anita Díaz alongside her mother Marisol escaped violent gangs in El Salvador, including a bad man who wanted to kill Marisol and made it to Arizona, despite being denied asylum, they entered illegally but not without injury. Marisol is detained and taken to a private prison in Texas, and soon Anita loses contact with her. A trial is set, but the child refuses to return to her dangerous country without her mother. Trapped in limbo, living in a group home for migrant children, she has a special way of seeing. She keeps hope alive and learns to cope with her loneliness and fears through conversations with her imaginary friend. She believes her angel will take them, and her mother once they are reunited, to Azabahar, a far better place than this world. Is everything she sees imaginary, or is she gifted? We learn about the trials of children like Anita and Samuel, things that would bring many adults to their knees. In time, Samuel and Anita come together, and he is reminded of the time in his life when he too had to say goodbye to his mother and was swallowed by the unknown. Samuel more than anyone experiences true compassion for the girl. It is a story about the plight of the displaced, what events force them to flee their homeland, and the resistance they are met with as well as the welcome some offer. It’s much harder to process thinking about children enduring it all, worse still when a parent isn’t there to comfort them. For both Samuel and Anita, it is endless, torturous waiting, left to imagine what has happened to their loved ones, and a child’s mind doesn’t harbor such darkness, as what happened to Samuel’s family after he fled. It is a book meant to be a voice for the children without country, disrupted lives trapped in a damaged immigration system through no fault of their own, those who have been forced to leave childhood behind too soon and how they carry their past forever, but with hope for a secure future.
Yes, read it.
Published June 6, 2023
Random House
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