THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS, by Kristin Harmel (Welbeck, $32.99)
This novel is inspired by World War II facts. The vast Naliboki Forest in Eastern Europe – more than 2000km of forestry rich in swamps and game – harboured many Jews from surrounding villages in what was then Poland.
Our heroine, Yona, is a young woman who was kidnapped as an infant from her Berlin home in the early 1920s by an old Jewish woman who brought her back to the forest. Jerusza educated Yona on religions, literature, languages, self-defence and, most importantly, survival in the wild. She dies in the
