Why a Booktrail?
1940: Second in the Faraway Island series
The Lily Pond
Why a Booktrail?
1940: Second in the Faraway Island series
What you need to know before your trail
A year after Stephie Steiner and her younger sister, Nellie, left Nazi-occupied Vienna, Stephie has finally adapted to life on the rugged Swedish island where she now lives. But more change awaits Stephie: her foster parents have allowed her to enroll in school on the mainland, in Goteberg. Stephie is eager to go. Not only will she be pursuing her studies, she’ll be living in a cultured city again—under the same roof as Sven, the son of the lodgers who rented her foster parents’ cottage for the summer.
Five years her senior, Sven dazzles Stephie with his charm, his talk of equality, and his anti-Hitler sentiments. Stephie can’t help herself—she’s falling in love. As she navigates a sea of new emotions, she also grapples with what it means to be beholden to others, with her constant worry about what her parents are enduring back in Vienna, and with the menacing spread of Nazi ideology, even in Sweden. In these troubled times, her true friends, Stephie discovers, are the ones she least expected.
Travel Guide
Travel to Gothenburg and the Faraway Island
This is the first novel in a series of four and is inspired by true events. Sweden took in 500 Jewish refugee children just before the war started. The author’s relatives were among those granted asylum and she has based much of the novels on this time. It depicts a vivid and sometimes frightening picture of life as a WWII refugee, as well as the complexities of sisterhood between the two young girls who are sent from Austria to Sweden.
“Gray-brown cliffs and rocks extend along the edge of the ocean…. The end of the world , Stephie thinks. This must be the end of the world ”
The two girls are sent to very different families and are to have very different experiences.
The story is one of communication – how the children have to learn Swedish and how they feel outsiders at first:
“A conversation is so much more than words: a conversation is eyes, smiles, the silences between words.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Lily Pond (Faraway Island 2)
Destination: Gothenburg Author/Guide: Annika Thor Departure Time: 1940
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