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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: THEY WENT LEFT
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.monicahesse.com/
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 314
http://www.monicahesse.com/bio.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Normal, IL.
EDUCATION:Bryn Mawr College, degree, 2003.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and author. Washington Post, Washington, DC, feature writer and host of weekly web chat. Guest on numerous media programs.
AVOCATIONS:Movies about sports.
AWARDS:Livingston Award finalist; James Beard Award finalist.
WRITINGS
Girl in the Blue Coat was adapted for audiobook, read by Natalia Payne and Suzanne Toren, Hachette Audio, 2016.
SIDELIGHTS
SUBMITTED IN SGML FORMAT
Monica Hesse earned her writing credentials while working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Based in Washington, DC, Hesse has covered a wide range of stories, from political campaigns to awards presentations, royal weddings, and dog shows. Since turning her attention to writing for young adults, her focus has been equally diverse. She contributes to the science-fiction genre in her companion novels Stray and Burn, while in her historical novel Girl in the Blue Coat she tapped her interest in the World War II era.
Set in Amsterdam in 1943, Girl in the Blue Coat forms a counterpoint to the oft-told story of Anne Frank. Hanneke Bakker, a Dutch teenager, is struggling to survive the third year of the German occupation of the Netherlands. Food, fuel, and other necessities are in short supply and jobs are equally scarce. Although Hanneke help to support her unemployed parents by working for a funeral director, she secretly trades ration cards of the recently deceased for black-market goods she then sells for cash. Although her wholesome appearance and friendly smile disarm even the soldiers at Nazi checkpoints, Hanneke carries a secret burden; the responsibility for her boyfriend’s death by encouraging him to join the Resistance fighting the invading German forces. When she learns that Mirjam, a Jewish teen, has disappeared from a secret room where she had been hiding, she channels her guilt into helping find the girl. As Hanneke searches for Mirjam, she becomes involved with the Amsterdam Student Group, which has the same goal. When she learns about the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a local theater that the Nazi’s are using as a deportation center, she locates Mirjam and begins to see her rescue mission as a path to redemption for her missteps.
“Hanneke is a well drawn and many-faceted character,” noted a London Guardian online reviewer in appraising Girl in the Blue Coat , and School Library Journal critic Donna Rosenblum described Hesse’s novel as a story of “love, betrayal, heroism, social responsibility, and atonement.” As Debbie Wenk noted in Voice of Youth Advocates, Girl in the Blue Coat exhibits “meticulous research and allows readers a fascinating look at life in occupied Europe.”
In Hesse’s near-future novel Stray readers meet Lona Sixteen Always, a teenager raised in a reputedly well-intentioned foster-care system called The Path. The Path professes to rescue abandoned or abused children and raise them away from any harmful influences. Until age eighteen its charges live in a world of virtual reality that is guided by virtual role model Julian. Fifty years ago, Julian was viewed as an example of the perfect child, and The Path now grooms children to conform their personalities and character traits to the Julian ideal. To further eliminate individuality, their names are mere identifiers: Lona’s four-character name identifies her birth date and group assignment; Sixteen is her current age and Always indicates her placement on the Julian Path. When she has the chance to mingle with teens in the real world, Lona experiences odd feelings and memories. Then she meets Fenn, an old friend who escaped from The Path and who now urges her to do likewise.
Burn follows Lona (now) Seventeen Always as she searches for the family that haunts her memories and her dreams. The knowledge that her mother is alive quickly leads Lona to the knowledge that The Path is a first step toward an even greater evil.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2016, Michael Cart, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 76.
BookPage, April 5, 2016, Anita Lock, review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
Horn Book Guide, fall, 2016, Elissa Gershowitz, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 127.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2016, review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
Library Journal, June 15, 2016, Ilka Gordon, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 42.
Publishers Weekly, January 25, 2016, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 209.
School Library Journal, February, 2016, Sonna Rosenblum, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 100.
Voice of Youth Advocates, February, 2016, Debbie Wenk, review of Girl in the Blue Coat, p. 58.
Washington Post, April 5, 2016, Annie Barrows, review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
ONLINE
Guardian online (London, England), https://www.theguardian.com/ (June 9, 2016), review of Girl in the Blue Coat.
Monica Hesse website, http://www.monicahesse.com (April 1, 2017).*
Monica Hesse is the national bestselling author of the true crime love story American Fire and the Edgar Award-winning young adult historical mystery novel Girl in the Blue Coat, which has been translated into a dozen languages and was shortlisted for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Choice Award. She is a feature writer for the Washington Post, where she has covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR, and she has been a winner of the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award, and a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica lives in Maryland. with her husband and a brainiac dog.
Extra Credit:
* From Normal, Illinois.
* Has heard all potential jokes about hailing from Normal, Illinois.
* Favorite books: "A Handmaid's Tale," "Ender's Game," "Moby Dick."
* Favorite places: grocery stores, libraries, country festivals, Istanbul.
* Left-handed.
* Good harmonizer.
* Vegetarian.
* Loves movies about sports, math, cooking (lukewarm on actual sports, math, cooking).
Monica Hesse
Washington, D.C.
Style reporter
Education: Bryn Mawr College, B.A. in English; Johns Hopkins University, M.A. in Nonfiction writing
Monica Hesse is a columnist for The Washington Post's Style section and author of "American Fire."
Honors & Awards:
Society for Features Journalism, first place, Narrative
Storytelling, 2017
Livingston Award, finalist in Local Reporting, 2015
Washington Post Publishers Award, 2014
Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest, winner, 2014.
Society for Features Journalism, third place, General Feature, 2014
James Beard Award, finalist in Humor, 2014
GLAAD Media Awards, finalist, Outstanding Newspaper Article, 2010
Edgar Allan Poe Award presented by Mystery Writers of America, winner, Best Young-Adult Mystery, 2016
Indies Choice Book Awards, finalist, Young Adult Book of the Year, 2016
Books by Monica Hesse:
American Fire
Buy it from Amazon
Girl in the Blue Coat
Buy it from Amazon
The War Outside
Buy it from Amazon
Monica Hesse
Monica Hesse is the author of the young adult historical fiction novel Girl in the Blue Coat, as well as the young adult science fiction novel Stray and its sequel, Burn. She is a feature writer for the Washington Post, where she has covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR, and she has been a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica hosts a weekly Washington Post chat, Web Hostess, and she lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and a brainiac dog.
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
New Books
April 2020
(hardback)
They Went Left
Series
Stray
1. Stray (2013)
2. Burn (2014)
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Novels
Girl in the Blue Coat (2016)
The War Outside (2018)
They Went Left (2020)
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Non fiction
American Fire (2017)
Four Questions for Monica Hesse
By Martha Schulman | Sep 25, 2018
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Set during World War II, in Crystal City—one of the very few U.S. internment camps that held both Japanese-American and German-American families—Monica Hesse’s The War Outside is the story of the friendship between Haruko and Margot. The two girls narrate their time in the camp as if talking to an unnamed, unseen journalist researching this dark period in American history, a form, Hesse says, that relates to her background in journalism—she’s a columnist for the Washington Post—and her interest in oral history. The War Outside has received six starred reviews; Hesse’s first YA book, The Girl in the Blue Coat, won the Edgar Award for Best YA Mystery. We spoke with Hesse about her research process, and about revisiting the subject of World War II in her new book.
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This is your second YA book set during the World War II; The Girl in the Blue Coat took place in 1943 Amsterdam. What interests you about this period?
My first book came out of always having been interested in The Diary of Anne Frank and realizing I only knew about Amsterdam from her perspective—which, of course, was inside an annex. I learned about Crystal City from a footnote while I was researching my first book, and it made me realize that there was a whole chapter of American history that I didn’t know a lot about. If you’re like me, the Japanese internment probably only made a few pages of your high school history books, and maybe the class didn’t even get up to that part of the book. I didn’t know enough about that history, and I had no idea that there was a camp that had both German and Japanese families in it.
On a broader scale, what I find really fascinating about World War II is that when we look at it now, we see it as the last great example of when we knew absolutely what was right and absolutely what was wrong. But when you read historical accounts and primary documents and listen to oral histories, you realize that it didn’t feel black and white at the time. Ordinary citizens did terrible things, let terrible things happen, or had terrible things happen to them. I’m interested in that time period because it’s a window into how murky and confusing the human experience is and what it feels like to be an ordinary person caught up in worldwide events that are beyond your control.
I always like stories best where people are both heroes and villains at different points in their lives. Where the bad things that happen don’t always happen because of bad people, but because of bad information or circumstances. The villain here is the U.S., their country, which has betrayed them. And once you’re in that place, how can any of your actions end up well? You’re already put in an impossible circumstance.
Not only is the book fashioned as if it is oral history, personal testimony was an important source for you. What draws you to this form of history?
My training is in journalism, and I think that’s a lot of it. The closer you can get to what happened—the more filters you can remove, the better. I like to read actual documents, because I think that’s where you discover both humanity and nuance. What’s always fascinating to me is reading things like the student newspapers produced by the teenagers imprisoned in the camps. I always try to remind myself that no matter how large the event was, real people were trying to lead real lives, and oral histories and primary sources are where you learn about the human beings caught up in these events.
The story begins when Haruko arrives at the camp, and the question of what constitutes normal life is a thread in the book, with Haruko reminding herself not to see this distortion of her life as normal. This resonates with our current political situation, which has seen a lot of discussion about not letting ourselves become accustomed to dangerous words and actions. Did you think about that as you were writing?
I wasn’t thinking of that as a specific message, but I do think that one of the difficult things about living in a trying time is reminding yourself that you’re in a crazy time and keeping your perspective and your wits about you. You have to balance the normal human emotion of telling yourself that it’s all going to be okay against the idea that it’s not okay. I see that when I research the World War II period, and I feel like it probably happens a lot.
Something that became really clear to me when researching this period, whether in the U.S. or Europe, is how horrified people are in the beginning, and how quickly they become used to things, as whatever the new horror is becomes their status quo. I think we experience that on a smaller scale now, for example, in terms of Trump’s Twitter feed. It used to be that any one of his tweets would have been a front-page story because they’re so outlandish and bizarre, but now we barely take note. It’s normal now that the leader of the country says things like this.
The book is permeated with the girls’ awareness of how being under suspicion and seeing their families trying to weather these circumstances has changed them. At one point Haruko says, “It feels like it is getting more and more impossible for all of us to come out of this and still be whole.” Does that idea speak to the larger issue of what it means to be a nation that has these dark places in its history?
I think this is the cycle of pain and beauty that the U.S. goes through, when some of its citizens commit horrific acts against other citizens, and every time that cycle is over, we say, ‘We’ve learned, we’re better, never again,’ and then we do it again. Sometimes we do it to different citizens, or sometimes it’s not Jim Crow laws, it’s bank redlining that prevents black families from buying homes. Sometimes we’re not putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps, instead we’re putting migrant children in internment camps. And that’s [where]“why”? this country is such a heartbreak, because it keeps thinking it’s going to do better, and then it doesn’t. But it keeps striving. So the idea of coming out of a difficult time whole relates to the idea of this cycle of hope and pain that defines the American experience.
The War Outside by Monica Hesse. Little, Brown, $17.99 Sept. ISBN 978-0-316-31669-9
Monica Hesse is the national bestselling author of the true crime love story American Fire and the Edgar Award-winning young adult historical mystery novel Girl in the Blue Coat, which has been translated into a dozen languages and was shortlisted for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Choice Award. She is a feature writer for the Washington Post, where she has covered royal weddings, dog shows, political campaigns, Academy Awards ceremonies, White House state dinners, and some events that felt like a mixture of all of the above. She has talked about these stories, and other things, on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, FOX and NPR. She has been a winner of the Society for Feature Journalism's Narrative Storytelling award, and a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. Monica lives in Maryland. with her husband and a brainiac dog.
Washington Post Names Monica Hesse as Paper’s First ‘Gender Columnist’
The paper lauds that Hesse with bring “her signature voice to a wide-ranging column that will explore this defining social issue.”
Jon Levine | May 23, 2018 @ 6:27 AM
Monica Hesse
YouTube
The Washington Post announced yesterday that is has named Monica Hesse as its first gender columnist.
“Monica stood out from the beginning. One of our most distinctive writers, she excels at everything from long-form narratives to breaking news, and is known for writing with poignancy and humor,” wrote a trio of the paper’s senior editorial leadership Tuesday, adding that Hesse would be “bringing her signature voice to a wide-ranging column that will explore this defining social issue.”
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Hesse is a longtime Washington Post staffer, beginning her career with the paper in 2007 as a Style intern.
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The paper noted back in February when it first announced its desire to bring on a gender columnist in response to the reporting coming out of the #MeToo movement.
“This columnist will be expected to navigate the full array: how gender intersects with sexual identity, race and class; how power relationships play out in the workplace, the home and other settings; how gender is represented in popular culture and the rest of society,” read a job description.
“Our goal is to publish a thoroughly reported and wide-ranging column that will explore what has emerged as one of the defining social issues of our time, here and abroad.”
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Magazine Gender Pay Gap Exposed: Men Out-Earn Women by 51 Percent, Study Finds
The move by the Washington Post follows in the footsteps of its principal rival, the New York Times. Last year, the Gray Lady named Jessica Bennett as its first gender editor and devoted this piece to reader questions about what exactly she would be doing in her position.
Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have been at the forefront of #MeToo reporting, with each writing several bombshell pieces exposing sexual misconduct across, Hollywood, media and politics.
National Book Festival: Monica Hesse — That Time David Foster Wallace Came Over…
August 15, 2019 by Neely Tucker
Author photo: Robert Cox.
We’ll be chatting with several of this year’s National Book Festival authors on the blog. First up is journalist and novelist Monica Hesse. She’s a Washington Post columnist and the author of “American Fire,” a bestseller in 2017. She’s written novels such as “Girl in the Blue Coat,” which won the 2017 Edgar Award for Young Adult fiction. Her most recent novel is “The War Outside.”
You grew up (famously) in Normal, Illinois. Your father worked with David Foster Wallace, and he came over to your house for dinner. As a developing writer, what was that like?
Completely, utterly lost on me. This was after “Infinite Jest” had come out, so he was already famous, but I was a moron who did not really pay attention to the literary world, and David Foster Wallace was just a guy who came over to watch “The X-Files” sometimes and was really good with our dogs.
From being a teenager to having a very successful writing career now: What’s most different about the writing life than what you might have pictured?
I think in my mind, being a writer always looked like the Colin Firth scenes from “Love Actually” — chunky sweater, chunky typewriter, picturesque setting. Lots of walks and coffee shops and waiting for inspiration to strike. It took me awhile to realize that words do not magically appear unless you, like, write them. And walking and sitting in coffee shops and wearing chunky sweaters is not writing. Writing is writing. So as much as we think of it as an artistic pursuit, it’s also work. There’s so much more relentless discipline in writing than my fantasies want there to be.
You wrote two books before “Girl in the Blue Coat” went big. Did that seem like a “make or break” book to you? Or was writing fiction something you knew you were always going to be doing?
It didn’t seem like make or break because I’ve always been lucky enough to love my day job. I’ve worked at the Washington Post, first as a reporter and now as a columnist, while writing all six of my books. If I’d been making a living by beheading chickens or something (I have nothing personally against chicken beheaders, but I’m a vegetarian) then I probably would have approached each book with more panic and higher stakes. Instead, I get to approach each one as an adventure: something I want to make better because of my own sense of pride and dedication to the story, not because I’ll starve otherwise.
People sometimes think the reporting/writing life is glamorous. I remember you once saying that, while reporting “American Fire,” you took a casserole (or similar) to a community dinner in the little town where this happened in order to introduce yourself to the locals. What did you cook? Did everybody like it?
Oh man, you’re going to make me rat myself out. It wasn’t “cook” so much as it was “buy from a very nice bakery.” I was trying to get the local sheriff to sit down with me for an interview, and he was a tough customer. My mother instructed me to put down my notebook, and bake that nice man a pie. Believe me when I tell you, though, that any pie crust made by me would not have won me an interview, it would have won me a restraining order. So I went to the local bakery and came out with enough cinnamon rolls and banana bread for the entire local police force. I don’t think the sheriff was charmed, I think he just took pity on me because the gesture was so desperate.
Your festival appearance is headlined “Growing Up Hard.” What do you remember most about your own teenage years that were most difficult? A hilariously endearing awkward story you’d like to share with everyone?
At the time, the things that made my teen years hard didn’t seem funny, they seemed deeply tragic — like my boyfriend breaking up with me the day before the Homecoming dance so he could take another girl (I decided I would go anyway “to show him” and ended up just sobbing in the corner half the night). All I can say to any young people reading this is: The sucky stuff will happen, and it will one day be book material.
You seem to be doing everything at once – a column at the Post, books, social media. Do you have a set time each day that you work on your fiction? Do you still shoot for 1,000 words per day?
When I’m actively writing something, I do 1,000 words a day. I know different patterns work for different people; a novelist buddy of mine does it by hours, and works from 10 p.m. to midnight. For me, I have to do it by word count. If I did it by hours, I’d just sit at my laptop and play solitaire for 90 minutes, then call it a day.
Who’s a tougher crowd: Book readers or readers of your column at Post?
Are you kidding? Book readers are the loveliest humans on the planet. Newspaper readers live to tell you you’re an idiot.
Am I remembering correctly that a chair once collapsed beneath you onstage at an event? Can I promise we’ll have a sturdy chair for you at the NBF?
I guess I’ll just have to find another way to embarrass myself.
Hesse will be appearing on the Teens Stage, Room 202, at 3:05 p.m. on a panel with author and illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka. It will be moderated by Maria Russo of the New York Times.
They Went Left. By Monica Hesse. Apr. 2020.384p. Little, Brown, $17.99 (9780316490573). Gr. 9-12.
Liberated from a German concentration camp, 18-year-old Zofia feels she is broken by the horrors of the war, that her mind has become soft, for she is easily confused and her memory is faulty. One thing she cannot forget, however, is her younger brother, Abek, from whom she was separated by the war. Now she's determined to find him, if he survived, so they can live their lives fully, A to Z. Her search takes her to Foehrenwald, a displaced persons camp in Germany. There she meets a young man named Josef, and the two fall in love. But what of Abek? Will some miracle reunite the siblings? And will Zofia find a happy ending with Josef, as in the stories she used to tell Abek? In her third novel set in the WWII period, Hesse again proves to be a master of verisimilitude, bringing the realities of existence in the immediate postwar period to visceral life through painstaking detail. Her beautifully realized, highly empathetic characters come to life, too, in the pages of this superbly crafted novel, the tone and sensibility of which perfectly match the material. Like real life, there is heartbreaking sadness here but also hope that life, finally, will be whole and fine, A to Z. --Michael Cart
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Cart, Michael. "They Went Left." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2020, p. 89. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A613203064/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=21a99bf5. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.
Hesse, Monica THEY WENT LEFT Little, Brown (Young Adult Fiction) $17.99 4, 7 ISBN: 978-0-316-49057-3
Well-researched historical fiction about what happened after the Holocaust ended.
So many books tackle experiences in the camps or the resistance movements, but what happened to the people liberated at the end of the war? Jewish Zofia, liberated from Gross-Rosen and then hospitalized, has trouble remembering things, like the last time she saw her younger brother, Abek, but she knows he is all she has left and that she needs to find him. Her journey takes her from Poland to Foehrenwald, a refugee camp in Germany. In Foehrenwald, Zofia begins to rediscover that life holds joy and opportunity. There, she connects with other people who have lost everything and yet have found purpose, including Zionists preparing for kibbutz life. She also meets Josef, to whom she is immediately attracted, and continues to follow leads to find Abek even as her patchy memory circles uncertainly around memories that hide something. Despite the well-researched setting and some genuinely touching emotional beats, the novel never really gels due to absences: intriguing side plots trail off, Zofia has little identity beyond her search for Abek, and the romantic subplot is needlessly convoluted. Judaism plays a minimal role in the Jewish characters' lives.
Notable for exploring an oft-forgotten moment but ultimately succeeds mostly as a history lesson. (note on history and research) (Historical fiction. 13-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
"Hesse, Monica: THEY WENT LEFT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2020. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A612618978/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fe638fd4. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.
THE WAR OUTSIDE
By Monica Hesse
Little, Brown
$17.99, 336 pages
ISBN 9780316316699
Audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
HISTORICAL FICTION
Monica Hesse's The War Outside pierces the heart with its exceptional story of family, friends and country. Two young women meet in a World War II internment camp in Texas for "enemy aliens"--those suspected of colluding with the Axis--but because Margot is German-American and Haruko is lapanese-American, the two teens cannot openly be friends.
When a dust storm forces the girls to shelter together, they overcome the mores of the camp and forge a tenuous bond. Inexorably drawn to each other, they continue to meet in secret. Alienated from all that is familiar, Haruko slowly reveals her fears for her brother's safety as he serves in the lapanese-American fighting unit. Margot feels empathy for Haruko, but she doesn't share her own secrets because she thinks they are too awful and that revealing them would drive Haruko away.
The War Outside highlights a blight on our country's past--the forced imprisonment of American citizens without a trial--and Hesse's story packs a gut-wrenching wallop as a result.
Author of the multiple award-winning novel Girl in the Blue Coat, Hesse offers a subtle promise in her new novel--to remember and never repeat this history. Riveting and meticulously researched, this story reverberates with authentic voices as it explores adolescent growth under dreadful circumstances.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Joyce, Lori K. "THE WAR OUTSIDE." BookPage, Oct. 2018, p. 27. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A556230312/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1763bc0d. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.
HESSE, Monica. The War Outside. 336p. Little, Brown. Sept. 2018. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9780316316699.
Gr 9 Up--Crystal City, TX, 1944. Haruko and her family are reunited with her father at an internment camp. Crystal City is unique for having both German and Japanese families. While trying to adjust to her new home, Haruko is drawn to Margot, the only German girl attending her high school. Despite their many differences, they are united by one shared experience: the camp is ruining both of their families. Haruko worries about her soldier brother and distrusts her father. Margot is concerned about her mother's ailing health and her father's growing alliance with Nazi supporters. As their secret friendship becomes more intense and tension rises among the camp prisoners, they must determine if they can trust anyone--even each other. The author of Girl in the Blue Coat returns with another superb historical fiction novel for YA collections. Hesse deftly balances actual events from Crystal City with a resonating fictional story of forbidden friendship and love. By switching between Haruko's and Margots narratives, and even including brief flash-forwards from both characters, Hesse weaves an engaging mystery. VERDICT A satisfying and bittersweet novel, perfect for those who enjoyed Markus Zusak's The Book Thief or Sherri L. Smith's Flygirl.--Kaetlyn Phillips, Yorkton, Sask.
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or in the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib. ed. Publisher's library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Phillips, Kaetlyn. "HESSE, Monica. The War Outside." School Library Journal, vol. 64, no. 7, July 2018, p. 73+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A545432432/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9db3642f. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.
American Fire: Love, Arson, and
Life in a Vanishing Land
Monica Hesse. Liveright, $26.95 (304p)
ISBN 978-1-63149-051-4
Washington Post reporter Hesse (Girl in the Blue Coat) leads readers on an extended tour of a bizarre five-month crime spree in rural Accomack County, Va.: a series of over 80 arsons, of predominantly abandoned buildings, committed by a local couple. It began one day in November 2012 with four fires in 24 hours and carried on for five months. As hysteria mounted, police camped out in tents near potential targets and a group of vigilantes set up their own operation. At the center of this narrative is the extremely compelling couple: Charlie Smith, a 38-year-old recovering drug addict, and Tonya Bundick, a 40-year-old partier described as the "queen" of the local nightclub, Shuckers. Hesse traces their romance from charming Facebook exchanges and plans of a Guns N' Roses themed wedding to passing notes in the prison yard after their arrest. Their love totally imploded under the pressure of their prosecution. Hesse offers sociological insight into a small town where "doors went unlocked, bake sales and brisket fund-raisers were well attended" despite its downward economic trajectory. There is something metaphorical, she notes, about a rural county suffering through a recession being literally burned to the ground. The metaphor becomes belabored by the time Hesse shoehorns in a comparison between small-town America and the aforementioned Shuckers, but otherwise this is a page-turning story of love gone off the rails. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
"American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land." Publishers Weekly, vol. 264, no. 13, 27 Mar. 2017, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A487928165/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f2899e2d. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.
Hesse, Monica AMERICAN FIRE Liveright/Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-63149-051-4
A captivating narrative about arson, persistent law enforcers, an unlikely romantic relationship, and a courtroom drama.The setting is Accomack County, a lightly populated area of the Eastern Shore "separated from the rest of the state by the Chesapeake Bay and a few hundred years of cultural isolation." Washington Post reporter Hesse (Girl in the Blue Coat, 2016) knew almost nothing about the economically depressed, desolate county when she first visited there in 2013 after hearing about a series of regularly occurring arsons of abandoned buildings. Eventually, the number of similar-seeming arsons would top out at 67. Though there were no reported deaths or serious injuries, the burning buildings were exhausting the lightly staffed volunteer fire departments in the county and consuming the resources of local and state law enforcement agencies. For nearly half a year, police mounted sophisticated stakeouts hoping to catch the arsonist in the act, but they consistently failed to identify a suspect. Even a profiler, who, it turned out, accurately predicted the neighborhood where the arsonist resided, did not see his lead pan out. Then, finally, a stakeout at an unoccupied home paid off. Hesse reveals the culprit early in the book--two of them, actually, Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick ("Bonnie and Clyde of the Eastern Shore"), who lived together romantically along with Bundick's sons. Local police knew the culprits personally; Smith had even served as a volunteer firefighter, as did his brother. As Hesse constructs her narrative, the surprises arrive in the manner of the arrest, the motives for the fires, and the outcomes of the multiple trials. Throughout, the author offers a nuanced portrait of a way of life unknown to most who have never resided on or visited the Eastern Shore. A true-crime saga that works in every respect.
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"Hesse, Monica: AMERICAN FIRE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A487668610/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8c39e8e7. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.