This is
billed as a “companion novel” to the award winning book, Code Name Verity. Rose Justice is working for the ATA (Air
Transport Auxiliary) in 1944, delivering planes from the factory to airfields
where they are needed, or taking planes from their fields into repair
facilities. Even though Rose is only 18 years old, and American, she has been
flying since she was 12 years old, because her father owns a flight school. As
soon as she graduates high school, she starts pressuring her Uncle Roger, an
engineer in the British military, to get her this job and now she’s here. She
has more flight experience than many of the young men flying into combat, but
women aren’t allowed to be combat pilots. When the Allies land at Normandy and
start pushing the lines back toward Germany, her Uncle persuades the powers
that be to let Rose deliver him to France where he supervises the building of
temporary bridges.
On the way home from this assignment, Rose spies a V-1
rocket and, relying on conversations she has had with other pilots,
successfully disrupts the rocket’s course sending it prematurely to the ground
before it reaches its target. However, in the process, she gets way off course,
is found by two Luftwaffe planes and brought back to Germany where she
eventually ends up in the notorious women’s concentration camp, Ravensbrück.
The bulk of the book then is her remembered account of what she endured during
her six months imprisonment before she escaped with two other prisoners. It is
both a heartbreaking and heart-warming story. Prisoners endure not just cold
and starvation and beatings and often death, but they are daily submitted to
the greatest humiliations and dehumanizing conditions, e.g., being given two
shoes of differing sizes to wear, having to stand for hours and even days in
the freezing cold as punishment while their bodily waste runs down their legs.
In spite of the conditions, or because of them, they defend each other fiercely
and often take life-threatening chances to hide those who have been selected
for execution. Based on extensive research, no holds are barred in describing
the treatment in the camp, so this book should be recommended with caution, but
it is a compelling story of human resilience in the face of absolutely
overwhelming challenges. The author provides a list of source materials
including those with primary source materials (interviews with survivors) and
one with a teaching guide.
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