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Someday We Will Fly
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  • Published: 21 January 2020
  • ISBN: 9780147508911
  • Imprint: Penguin Books US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99

Someday We Will Fly

Formats & editions
Paperback
21 Jan 2020
EBook
22 Jan 2019
Audiobook
22 Jan 2019
Tr. Paperback
22 Jan 2019
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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.

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

“A provocative exploration of what resilience means when you’re pushed to the edge.”—BCCB

“A beautifully nuanced exploration of culture and people.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Shanghai, 1941.

When her mother vanishes from Warsaw, Lillia Kazka and her family flee Poland and the Nazis for Shanghai, a city also at war. Occupied by the Japanese army, Shanghai is one of the few remaining places in the world where Jewish families without visas can land safely. There with her father and baby sister, Lillia must learn to survive, even though her mother is missing, even though everything feels impossibly unfamiliar to the refugees who have lost entire lives.

With help from a community of strangers and friends, Lillia learns how to keep herself and her family intact, how to speak Chinese, how to scrape together enough food to survive, and how to protect her speechless sister. Struggling to find meaning for herself in a new life she didn’t ask for, and to make sense of the shattered lives around her, Lillia waits—for her mother, for certainty, for the place that might ultimately feel like home.
  • Published: 21 January 2020
  • ISBN: 9780147508911
  • Imprint: Penguin Books US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Rachel DeWoskin

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.
RD

Also by Rachel DeWoskin

Blind
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Praise for Someday We Will Fly

Praise for Someday We Will Fly:

★ "Meticulously researched and breathtakingly detailed...DeWoskin beautifully intertwines Lillia's hope, pain, joy, sorrow, and love with the larger narrative of the war-torn world's fear and uncertainty...essential reading."
     -Kirkus, 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

"Should be admired and savored by discerning adults...DeWoskin vividly captures this fraught time of dislocation and turmoil and defly connects the anguish of Jewish refugees and the agony of the Japanese occupation, elevating this beautiful novel into a clarion call for peace."
     -National Book Review
"An engrossing and beautifully rendered plunge into less-known Holocaust history."
     -Julie Berry, author of Lovely War
"Someday We Will Fly is the powerful, adventurous story of a teenager who confronts the brutal history with courage, love, and imagination. I could not put it down."
     -Aleksandar Hemon, author of Nowhere Man