STONES ON A GRAVE

Secrets can hide painful truths, as a young woman learns in this novel set in 1964.

After the Ontario orphanage she lives in burns down, 18-year-old Sara is left with questions: where to go? What to do? More questions develop when the matron reveals the details of Sara's birth. She isn't Canadian but German—and Jewish. Her mother was liberated from a concentration camp but died shortly after giving birth. Armed only with the name of the doctor who falsified her medical records so she could leave Germany and her mother’s Star of David necklace, Sara sets off for Germany to find answers. But in a country still recovering from its actions during the Holocaust, no one wants to talk. Only Peter, a friendly boy who speaks English, and Frau Klein, everyone's substitute Jewish grandmother, will help Sara find the shocking truth about her past. And once she looks to the past, she can see her future. Sara occasionally feels too young for her age, even given the time period and her small-town upbringing. Nevertheless, the story offers an unusual glimpse into a Germany just one generation past the Holocaust and only beginning to deal with its repercussions.

Part of the interconnected Secrets series, the novel is a quick, easy read about a little-known period