Someday We Will Fly, Rachel DeWoskin
Someday We Will Fly, Rachel DeWoskin
1 Rating(s)
List: $27.50 | Sale: $19.25
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Someday We Will Fly

Author: Rachel DeWoskin

Narrator: Jayne Entwistle, Rachel DeWoskin

Unabridged: 11 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/22/2019


Synopsis

From the author of Blind, a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge.

Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn't understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?

    Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when her family was circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a "gentlemen's club" without her father's knowledge.

But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?

About The Author

Rachel DeWoskin spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera that inspired her memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing. She is the author of Repeat After Me and Big Girl Small, which received the American Library Association's Alex Award for an adult book with special appeal to teen readers; Rachel's conversations with young readers inspired her to write her first YA novel, Blind. Rachel is on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where she teaches creative writing. She lives in Chicago with her husband, playwright Zayd Dohrn, and their two daughters. Rachel and her family spent six summers in Shanghai while she researched Someday We Will Fly.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katy O.

Powerful historical fiction. The fact that I just read an excellent adult novel that was about this exact same topic and time period may have taken my appreciation of it from love to like, however ~ if you want an outstanding adult story of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WWII, definitely read “T......more

I don't know how to explain this book other than "touching." It truly is a very different type of story and experience that Lillian goes through . The cultural and language I pact alone but then add I. Your mother, hovering Japanese soldiers, poverty and having to step up at 15 to take care of your......more

The author of FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING and BIG GIRL SMALL, Rachel DeWoskin, now brings a new novel to the stage --- SOMEDAY WE WILL FLY. This novel captures an unknown moment in history during World War II and the Holocaust: Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Before May 17th, 1940, Lillia's parents, Bercik......more

Goodreads review by Rachel

An increasing number of books are highlighting a lesser known aspect of World War II: the Jews who escaped Europe and found their way to Shanghai. Desperate times make people act in ways they might otherwise never consider, as Lillia Kazka discovers in “Someday We Will Fly” by Rachel DeWoskin (Vikin......more

Goodreads review by Amy

I really wanted to like this book. It highlights a piece of history about which I knew very little and the story seems like a good idea. It was just such a slog and I did not find the writing compelling.......more


Quotes

★ "DeWoskin explores a rarely depicted topic. . .A beautifully nuanced exploration of culture and people." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

★ "An unusual portrait of what war does to families in general and children in particular . . . affirms the human need for art and beauty in hard times." -Booklist, starred review

"A provocative exploration of what resilience means when you’re pushed to the edge." -BCCB