The novel is based on a true story.
"... a twelve-year-old girl flees Nazi-occupied Germany with her family and best friend on the SS St. Louis, a transatlantic liner offering Jews safe passage out of Germany and to Cuba. But the governments of Cuba, the United States, and Canada are denying the passengers of the St. Louis admittance to their countries." The family has to split in Havana, some returning to Germany.
Book beginning:
Hannah, Berlin 1939
I was almost twelve years old when I decided to kill my parents.
I had made up my mind. I'd go to bed and wait till they fell asleep. That was always easy to tell because Papa would lock the big, heavy double windows and close the thick greenish-bronze curtains. He'd repeat the same things he said every night after supper, which in those days had become little more than a steaming bowl of tasteless soup.
Page 56:
Mom hugs me, and I start to cry. I'm her little girl again and I fall into her arms so that she can soothe me, stroke me.
The beginning of the book sounds pretty dramatic, but of course Hannah does not kill her parents. This only shows she is extremely upset about the changes to come.
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.
