She wants to learn to read the sacred text and to write poetry. Her family has picked a husband for her, but she wants to make her own choice about whom she marries and her future. Her family secretly practices their Jewish traditions in the cellar of their home where they make wine that serves a clientele of local nobility. Sixteen-year-old Isabela Perez lives with her family in Trujillo, Spain, in 1481 as conversos, Jewish people who have lived in Spain for centuries and have converted to Christianity.
Back matter includes a map of the World Trade Center and an author’s note detailing the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. Taz, who was born Brandon Chavez and became the ward of Richard following 9/11, confesses to Reshmina that he had joined the army seeking revenge but found compassion instead. Her family shows compassion, sequestering the surviving American, Taz, who begged her for help after being blinded in the attack.
The chapters alternate between that day in New York City in 2001 as Brandon, a man named Richard, and other strangers work together to escape the building, and another day, September 11, 2019, in Afghanistan, when Taliban fighters attack the village of eleven-year-old Reshmina and her family, killing Americans who were doing reconnaissance there. When the first airliner hits the building, he is in an elevator on his way to the underground mall to buy a toy. On September 11, 2001, nine-year-old Brandon Chavez takes the subway to the World Trade Center with his father, a chef for Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower. The back matter includes an author’s note with information on interviews she conducted with ghost children survivors, a glossary, and information on the officers. Including many archival photographs, Ann Bausum’s narrative establishes the context of the officers’ loyalty to Germany and provides details of their family lives. The failure of the plot precipitates Hitler’s revenge of demanding Sippenhaft, “clan arrest.” Gestapo agents arrested, detained, and executed relatives of these officers and scooped up their children, isolating and incarcerating them in secret places. Their master plan is suspensefully detailed in the first half of this intriguing book. In 1944 some German career military officers planned an assassination of Adolf Hitler at his outpost, the Wolf’s Lair, as a result of their doubts about the tactics and goals of the Nazi regime.
Ensnared in the Wolf’s Lair: Inside the 1944 Plot to Kill Hitler and the Ghost Children of His Revenge.
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