Rust and Bone
For two hundred years, pockets of German settlers have lived in Ukraine, but when World War II breaks out, their remoteness doesn’t protect them. After the Nazis withdraw in the dying days of the Third Reich, the Red Army sweeps in with vengeance on their minds. Teenaged Jakob, separated from his family, manages to flee a death train and falls in with his old Nazi schoolmaster and a villager who has it in for him. Through a post-apocalyptic world, they stumble toward the West, where they hope to find safety from the Russians. Little by little, they are disillusioned of the promises made to their people by a lying Führer. It is a journey to curdle the blood, filled with bombs and corpses, ruses, starvation, and violence—but also heartening acts of kindness. By the time he reaches Berlin, Jakob is on his own except for a small dog vouchsafed him by a child soldier. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the city, the adolescent Frida endures the bombardment with her family, the father a faraway POW. Between the underground shelter and scraping the empty fields for food, her life is one no teen should have to live.
Sparely written and unsentimental, Rust and Bone is hard to read, yet it keeps pulling the reader onward in a great act of hope. Read it and declare, as we all did after that conflagration, “War never again.” Highly recommended.
