Wednesday Night Book Club

First Wednesdays of each month, 7:15 p.m., McMullen Room

August 4: "German Boy: A Child in War" by Wolfgang Samuel

The author was 10 years old when he, his mother, and younger sister fled the advancing Russian army in Germany in the final days of World War II. Describing the events many years later, Samuel still vividly remembers the disorientation, terror, hunger, and desperation that dogged their lives until 1951 when they arrived in the United States. The voice of a little boy develops into that of a young man as he writes of his mother's indomitable spirit and the degrading extremes she went to in order to obtain food and shelter for her children. The boy is ill-prepared to assume the crushing responsibility for keeping his family together and alive after the war years when he finds himself a refugee and outcast in his own country. There is a thread of hope, an appreciation for random kindness, and an ability to look beyond the depravity of humankind that pervades this brave and poignant memoir of a man who went on to serve 30 years in the U.S. Air Force and retired as a colonel. Review by Cynthia J. Rieben, School Library Journal

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