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OLDER FICTION
McCrina, Amanda

The Silent Unseen

320 pp. | Farrar | April, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-0-374-31355-5 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-374-31356-2 $10.99
(2) YA Sixteen-year-old María Kamińska has returned home after two and a half years in Rüsselsheim, Germany, as an Ostarbeiter, a "slave worker" at the Opel automobile factory. Both the Nazis and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939, and now, in August 1944, the Soviets are taking over, while Polish resistance--with the support of the Silent Unseen (elite Polish special-operations agents trained in Britain)--and Ukrainian nationalists continue with their own years-long conflict. María's narrative becomes entwined with that of Kostya, a courier for the military arm of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Their relationship mirrors the larger complicated machinations of warring parties in a land already devastated by war; at times, the characters seem more like pawns in a complicated chess game than fully realized people. It's a complex narrative bolstered by a useful historical note, a list of military and paramilitary forces, and a two-page list of characters to help readers keep track of everything going on. McCrina (Traitor, rev. 11/20), like Ruta Sepetys (I Must Betray You, rev. 2/22), is adept at finding important stories in places not well known to American readers, and this novel may well find an audience with young World War II history buffs.
Reviewer: Dean Schneider

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