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The Forest of Vanishing Stars
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2021
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Chapter OneCHAPTER ONE 1922 The old woman watched from the shadows outside Behaimstrasse 72, waiting for the lights inside to blink out. The apartment's balcony dripped with crimson roses, and ivy climbed the iron rails, but the young couple who lived there--the power-hungry Siegfried Jüttner and his aloof wife, Alwine--weren't the ones who tended the plants. That was left to their maid, for the nurturing of life was something only those with some goodness could do. The old woman had been watching the Jüttners for nearly two years now, and she knew things about them, things that were important to the task she was about to undertake. She knew, for example, that Herr Jüttner had been one of the first men in Berlin to join the National Socialist German Workers' Party, a new political movement that was slowly gaining a foothold in the war-shattered country. She knew he'd been inspired to do so while on holiday in Munich nearly three years earlier, after seeing an angry young man named Adolf Hitler give a rousing speech in the Hofbräukeller. She knew that after hearing that speech, Herr Jüttner had walked twenty minutes back to the elegant Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, had awoken his sleeping young wife, and had lain with her, though at first she had objected, for she had been dreaming of a young man she had once loved, a man who had died in the Great War. The old woman knew, too, that the baby conceived on that autumn-scented Bavarian night, a girl the Jüttners had named Inge, had a birthmark in the shape of a dove on the inside of her left wrist. She also knew that the girl's second birthday was the following day, the sixth of July, 1922. And she knew, as surely as she knew that the bell-shaped buds of lily of the valley and the twilight petals of aconite could kill a man, that the girl must not be allowed to remain with the Jüttners. That was why she had come. The old woman, who was called Jerusza, had always known things other people didn't. For example, she had known it the moment Frédéric Chopin had died in 1849, for she had awoken from a deep slumber, the notes of his "Revolutionary Étude" marching through her head in an aggrieved parade. She had felt the earth tremble upon the births of Marie Curie in 1867 and Albert Einstein in 1879. And on a sweltering late June day in 1914, two months after she had turned seventy-four, she had felt it deep in her jugular vein, weeks before the news reached her, that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne had been felled by an assassin's bullet, cracking the fragile balance of the world. She had known then that war was brewing, just as she knew it now. She could see it in the dark clouds that hulked on the horizon. Jerusza's mother, who had killed herself with a brew of poisons in 1860, used to tell her that the knowing of impossible things was a gift from God, passed down through maternal blood of only the most fortunate Jewish women. Jerusza, the last of a bloodline that had stretched for centuries, was certain at times that it was a curse instead, but whatever it was, it had been her burden all her life to follow the voices that echoed through the forests. The leaves whispered in the trees; the flowers told tales as old as time; the rivers rushed with news of places far away. If one listened closely enough, nature always spilled her secrets, which were, of course, the secrets of God. And now, it was God who had brought Jerusza here, to a fog-cloaked Berlin street corner, where she would be responsible for changing the fate of a child, and perhaps a piece of the world, too. Jerusza had been alive for eighty-two years, nearly twice as long as the typical German lived. When people looked at her--if they bothered to look at all--they were visibly startled by her wizened features, her hands gnarled by decades of hard living. Most of the time, though, strangers simply ignored her, just as Siegfried and Alwine Jüttner had done each of the hundreds of times they had passed her on the street. Her age made her particularly invisible to those who cared most about appearance and power; they assumed she was useless to them, a waste of time, a waste of space. After all, surely a woman as old as she would be dead soon. But Jerusza, who had spent her whole life sustained by the plants and herbs in the darkest spots of the deepest forests, knew that she would live nearly twenty years more, to the age of 102, and that she would die on a spring Tuesday just after the last thaw of 1942. The Jüttners' maid, the timid daughter of a dead sailor, had gone home two hours before, and it was a few minutes past ten o'clock when the Jüttners finally turned off their lights. Jerusza exhaled. Darkness was her shield; it always had been. She squinted at the closed windows and could just make out the shape of the little girl's infant bed in the room to the right, beyond pale custard curtains. She knew exactly where it was, had been into the room many times when the family wasn't there. She had run her fingers along the pine rails, had felt the power splintering from the curves. Wood had memory, of course, and the first time Jerusza had touched the bed where the baby slept, she had been nearly overcome by a warm, white wash of light. It was the same light that had brought her here from the forest two years earlier. She had first seen it in June 1920, shining above the treetops like a personal aurora borealis, beckoning her north. She hated the city, abhorred being in a place built by man rather than God, but she knew she had no choice. Her feet had carried her straight to Behaimstrasse 72, to bear witness as the raven-haired Frau Jüttner nursed the baby for the first time. Jerusza had seen the baby glowing, even then, a light in the darkness no one knew was coming. She didn't want a child; she never had. Perhaps that was why it had taken her so long to act. But nature makes no mistakes, and now, as the sky filled with a cloud of silent blackbirds over the twinkling city, she knew the time had come. It was easy to climb up the ladder of the modern building's fire escape, easier still to push open the Jüttners' unlatched window and slip quietly inside. The child was awake, silently watching, her extraordinary eyes--one twilight blue and one forest green--glimmering in the darkness. Her hair was black as night, her lips the startling red of corn poppies. " Ikh bin gekimen dir tzu nemen ," Jerusza whispered in Yiddish, a language the girl would not yet know. I have come for you . She was startled to realize that her heart was racing. She didn't expect a reply, but the child's lips parted, and she reached out her left hand, palm upturned, the dove-shaped birthmark shimmering in the darkness. She said something soft, something that a lesser person would have dismissed as the meaningless babble of a little girl, but to Jerusza, it was unmistakable. " Dus zent ir ," said the girl in Yiddish. It is you. " Yo, dus bin ikh ," Jerusza agreed. And with that, she picked up the baby, who didn't cry out, and, tucking her close against the brittle curves of her body, climbed out the window and shimmied down the iron rail, her feet hitting the sidewalk without a sound. From the folds of Jerusza's cloak, the baby watched soundlessly, her mismatched ocean eyes round, as Berlin vanished behind them and the forest to the north swallowed them whole. Excerpted from The Forest of Vanishing Stars: A Novel by Kristin Harmel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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Trade Reviews
Publishers Weekly Review
Harmel (The Book of Lost Names) returns with a powerful account of a young woman's efforts during WWII to teach Jews how to survive in the forests of Eastern Europe. In 1922, Yona, born Inge Jüttner, was kidnapped at age two by Jerusza, a clairvoyant forest dweller who felt compelled to save the child from her German parents, whom Jerusza later says were "bad people." Jerusza hides Yona in the Nalibocka Forest and, as she grows up, teaches her survival skills. In 1942, after Jerusza dies, Yona encounters a group of Jewish refugees in the woods and shows them how to evade the Nazis and survive the harsh winters. But after a romantic betrayal, Yona leaves them, and in a village she meets a group of nuns targeted for execution by the Nazis. She appeals to the Nazi leader, whose face is instantly familiar to her, to stop, then is ordered to remain with him. After Yona learns of an imminent forest raid, she escapes and rejoins the refugees, guiding them deeper into the forest. With the Nazis tracking them, the narrative culminates in a terrifying climax. Along the way, the author impresses with descriptions of how Yona and the refugees survive. Harmel's stirring adventure will captivate readers. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (July)
Booklist Review
An elderly Jewish mystic, Jerusza, recognizes toddler Yona, born to wealthy Germans in Beriln, her father a Nazi, as a special being and takes her to live deep in the Eastern European forest. After Jerusza's death, Yona crosses paths with Polish Jews fleeing the Nazis. Reluctantly letting down her guard, she teaches them survival skills and gradually joins the group, becoming romantically involved with their charismatic leader. But when he betrays her, she sets off on her own and comes to a German-occupied village where her past and present collide, putting her and the group in danger. Harmel's latest WWII adventure, following The Book of Lost Names (2020), was inspired by her deep research into the stories of Jews who evaded the Nazis by hiding deep in the woods. Yona and her quest to understand her origins is compelling, but the real star is Harmel's richly detailed rendering of the sheltering and sustaining forest. Recommended for fans of historical novels with a strong sense of place, such as Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) and Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone (2018).
Summary
Parade "Best Books of Summer" pick * Real Simple pick * She Reads "Best WWII Fiction of Summer 2021" pick

The New York Times bestselling author of the "heart-stopping tale of survival and heroism" ( People ) The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis--until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what's happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest--and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author whose writing has been hailed as "sweeping and magnificent" (Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author), "immersive and evocative" ( Publishers Weekly ), and "gripping" ( Tampa Bay Times ).
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