They Went Left (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780316490573)

In the rubble of a broken continent, a girl must solve a mystery whose answers could rebuild her family--or break her completely, in this New York Times bestselling, critically acclaimed tour de force historical novel from Monica Hesse, author of Girl in the Blue Coat. Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp say the war is over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal, her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else--her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja--they went left. Zofia's last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past: Miriam, desperately searching for the twin she was separated from after they survived medical experimentation. Breine, a former heiress, who now longs only for a simple wedding with her new fiancé. And Josef, who guards his past behind a wall of secrets, and is beautiful and strange and magnetic all at once.

But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing?


Author: Monica Hesse
ISBN-10: 0316490571
ISBN-13: 9780316490573
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Language: English
Published: 04/07/2020
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 1.50d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.1
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 508897 / They Went Left

Award: Sydney Taylor Book Award - Honor Book

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 01/01/2020 pg. 89
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2020
Publishers Weekly 02/17/2020
School Library Journal 03/01/2020 pg. 116
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 04/01/2020 - Book Of Special Distinction
Shelf Awareness 04/17/2020
Horn Book Magazine 07/01/2020 pg. 138
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2020 - Superior,Well Above Average