The New York Times bestselling, Sydney Taylor Honor winning, critically acclaimed tour de force historical mystery from Monica Hesse, author of Girl in the Blue Coat.
Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal, her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.
Zofia's last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past: Miriam, desperately searching for the twin she was separated from after they survived medical experimentation. Breine, a former heiress, who now longs only for a simple wedding with her new fiancé. And Josef, who guards his past behind a wall of secrets, and is beautiful and strange and magnetic all at once.
But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? In the rubble of a broken continent, Zofia must delve into a mystery whose answers could break her—or help her rebuild her world.
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Original Binding: Paperback
Pages: 400 pages
ISBN-10: 0316490598
Item Weight: 0.8 lbs
Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.4 x 8.3 inches
Customer Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars 10,001 to 50,000 ratings
Praise for They Went Left: A New York Times and IndieBound bestseller A Sydney Taylor Honor Book Edgar Award Nominee, Best Young Adult Mystery An NPR Best Book of the Year A New York Times Best Book of the Year Booklist Editor’s Choice
"Hesse writes with tenderness and insight about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive and the ways we cobble together family with whatever we have. When the plot twists come, they are gut punches--some devastating, others offering hope... Crucial."—New York Times Book Review
Monica Hesse is the bestselling author of Girl in the Blue Coat, American Fire, and The War Outside, as well as a columnist at the Washington Post. She lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband and their dog.
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