Five Favorite Moments from ‘Someday We Will Fly’

Welcome to the blog tour for Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin! Set during World War Two as a Jewish family escapes from Poland to Shanghai, this is a powerful book of survival and human resilience.

I’m going to be sharing five of my favorite moments from the novel:

 

1. The opening scene

While the opening of this book tears Lillia’s family apart, it also introduces us to her family and the strong bond they share. It is beautifully written and absolutely heart-wrenching as you follow Lillia through the beginning of her nightmare.

2. When Lillia meets Wei

Lillia’s friendship with a Chinese boy who works at the school she attends is sweet and encouraging. They agree to teach each other English and Chinese as they work and Wei becomes a recurring figure throughout the novel.

3. Lillia doing her morning stretches and exercises

As both of Lillia’s parents were in the circus back in Poland, Lillia wants to keep practicing what she has seen her parents, and especially her mother, doing. So every morning, Lillia does the stretches that she used to see her mother do and hopes desperately for her mother to reappear. These moments are sad and touching and a reminder of the importance of family.

4. The circus that Lillia puts on with friends

When Lillia puts on a show with puppets she has made using recycled material, it’s a necessary reminder of the importance of hope and happiness and the arts. It’s one of the only moments when Lillia gets to shine and her family gets to witness her at her best.

5. (Warning: Spoiler!)

When Lillia’s father gets the letter that his wife – Lillia’s mother – is alive.

It’s enough to make you sob out of happiness that their family will be reunited

 

About the book:

Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is 15 when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn’t understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive?

Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when they were circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a “gentlemen’s club” without her father’s knowledge.

But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?

 

Someday We Will Fly hits shelves on January 22, 2019!

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