A moving account of a young Polish girl's coming of age as a Jewish refugee in Shanghai during WWII. Reminds me of Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray.

The author has lived in Shanghai, which gives her descriptions of places authenticity. In this story, the main character of Lillia is the daughter of circus performers who wants to become one herself. Her family plans to flee to Shanghai, losing their mother in a raid. They don't know where she is, but it is too dangerous to stay, and father and daughters, Lillia and Naomi, have to leave and hope she finds them.

In Shanghai, they live in a Jewish settlement called the Heime, which resembles the slums in Germany where other Jews were forced to live. Under conditions of extreme privation, Lillia manages to attend a school for Jewish refugees, where she befriends a luckier girl, Rebecca, who lives in an expatriot compound across the river, a refugee named Biatta, and a Chinese boy named Wei, who is the school's janitor.

At first I thought it would make a good read for younger teens, but there are some circumstances later in the book that would be better for a more mature teen. ( )

Prior to the years preceding World War II, Shanghai, a thriving port city, already was home to an immigrant population, including Jews, many of whom had fled to Shanghai following the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia reports that during the early 1930s, Nazi policy encouraged Jewish emigration from Germany (before they cut off emigration so they could kill Jews instead). Shanghai was one of the few places willing to take Jews, and until August 1939 did not even require visas to enter.

In this novel that won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award for Young Adult Literature and the 2020 Sydney Taylor Award for Young Adults, Lillia Kaczka, the narrator, is 15 and living in Warsaw, Germany with her parents, who are trapeze artists in a circus, and baby sister Naomi. As violence against Jews accelerates, Bercik, the father, makes arrangements for them to travel to Shanghai. At the time they had to leave, however, Lillia’s mother, Alenka, was missing. They had no choice but to go without her, leaving information about where they would be if she could ever get there.

The family experienced culture shock in Shanghai, in addition to being without money, scarce jobs, and constantly hungry. [Per the Holocaust Museum, Shanghai’s refugee population suddenly jumped from about 1,500 at the end of 1938 to nearly 17,000 one year later. The local Jews were overwhelmed and hard pressed to find the resources to help needy families.]

Lillia and her family moved into one of the shelters established for the impoverished Jewish refugees. The one the Kaczkas were in was a converted former barracks and slept from six to 150 to a room. They ate mostly at soup kitchens, but Lillia sometimes stole to supplement their food allotment.

Lillia tried to take care of Naomi while her father looked for work everyday, and always they worried about Alenka. At a free school for refugees, Lillia met and forged a bond with Wei, a Chinese worker at the school. She stopped attending school though when her father and sister got sick, and she had to find more money to take care of them. She took the route of impoverished and desperate women throughout time, making her way to a “gentlemen’s club,” where at first, she was only required to sit with men and to dance. She had studied performance her whole life because of her parents, and was able to win over the audience with her acrobatics. But for the heartless “madam,” this was not enough.

Meanwhile, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; America entered the war; and the Japanese arrived in force in Shanghai to set up a regime reminiscent of the Nazis in Europe. What will happen to them and where will they end up if the war ever ends?

Discussion: This novel is interesting in that it (a) chronicles a little-known aspect of the Holocaust and its victims, and (b) does it from the perspective of a young girl, who doesn’t know much about world events except what she overhears in snatches of conversations. Her world is still very much about making friends, meeting boys, and helping to take care of her family. When that latter concern propels her into a grown-up world where she must make moral compromises, she has no one and nothing to guide her, except the demands of her heart.

Evaluation: This is a very affecting and memorable story but readers will have to fill in a number of blanks that are either unknown by Lillia, or that she is reluctant to talk about, even to herself. ( )

RGG: Fascinating history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WWII. The story perhaps could have been more concise and/or more could have happened. Reading Interest: 13-YA.

SOMEDAY WE WILL FLY by Rachel DeWoskin

Performers in the Warsaw Circus must flee for their lives from the Nazis. As they flee to Shanghai, Lillia’s mother is lost. She and father left with no Choice, continue to Shanghai where Jews are being offered safety, but not an easy life. As the Japanese draw ever nearer, life becomes more tenuous and scary.
Well written and researched, this YA novel is also a wonderful read for adults. The Jewish experience in war time China has been little known. This book attempts to rectify that omission and succeeds. Lillia, her father and those she comes in contact with are fully developed characters. The plot is engrossing.
5 of 5 stars ( )