"You have to beat the words, Marta, beat the stuttering. Learn to speak, to let your voice be heard." After her father's death, all Marta wants to do is hide. Hide from her stuttering. Hide from the world outside her home. Hide from her family who so often reminds her of him. But even Marta realizes she cannot hide forever, and staying hidden gets even harder when her mother decides they are leaving Germany for America. Trying so desperately to cling to her silence, Marta realizes her only relief is writing letters. Until she meets Emma, and the families she is forced to stay with. While the families try to help Marta find her voice; Marta realizes the only way to sail towards her family, is to sail away from her silence.

It started on a night with broken glass. First the glass, then the screams, and then the blood. And then, their lives were changed forever. It marked the beginning of her brother's suffering. As Else Schüffen struggles to define everything that is happening around her in Germany 1941, Maximilian faces a different kind of struggle. An adopted Jew in a Christian family, Max faces betrayal and loss, forgiveness and anger. Being a divided family with a Nazi as a brother, his fears become a reality. He must go into hiding, but with a different identity: Henrik Brandenburg, an Aryan shopkeeper. And then there's Else, a young Aryan girl, in the midst of her brother's tumult. Painting, it seems, is the only way of escape, and the only way to keep her brother, Maximilian, in her heart forever. Through it all, there is one thing she learns. Sometimes, in order to survive, we must repair our broken wings and learn to fly again~ #39 in historical fiction//March 29th Edited by the lovely @jgfairytales