Gain Access To The Enemy: Detroit, 1954 Fabricated By Sara Holbrook Presented In Kindle
thought I knew where this story was headed, and found it engaging but predictable, Until the plot gently veered offcourse and I found myself pleasantly surprised by the direction it had taken, Marjorie is super average, nothing special, just your everyday tween/teen dealing with friends, bullies, teachers, and family struggles, But lightly layered on top of all that typical stuff is her father's PTSD, a new girl in school
who may or may not be an exNazi, Communist threats at her local library, a young man who comes to live with her family because his father committed suicide, and underlying all this is the neverentirelystraightlyaskedquestion about what it means to be American.
I wish the library plot thread didn't fade into the background, but other than that, I am a big fan of this story, I could not put this book down, Marjorie is in a crowdedth grade with kids of various European descent, but when blond Inga moves in from “Canada,” the tough popular girl, who is Marjories best friend, immediately calls her out as a Nazi.
Meanwhile, Marjories mom is struggling though the stifling attitudes toward women and particularly chafing at McCarthyism directed at library books, What if some smuggled books are found out Can Marjorie stand up to Bernadette and make friends with Inga What should we do about our enemies once the war is over Answers come from sometimes surprising places in this fast paced, insightful story.
I've been reading a lot of books about the Cold War lately and this is one to read if you have an interest, It describes the antiGerman sentiment that permeated American culture in thes ands, There was much less tolerance for cultural differences back then and Detroit was one of the melting pot cities, This book is based loosely on the author's own experiences growing up in Detroit,
Marjorie is very aware of the antiNazi/antiCommunist atmosphere around her, Communists are called Commies and immigrants are called DPs for displaced persons, WWis still fresh in people's minds and they have no tolerance for Germans, When a new German girl named Inga joins her class and she is instructed to share her desk since there are no others, Marjorie is faced with a moral dilemma.
She wants to be nice to Inga and help her learn to read English, but she knows it will jeopardize her friendship with the popular, but intolerant, Bernadette.
Her father, a retired military man, who works for a company with ties to the military, is socially aware of the importance to not appear to be a Communist sympathizer.
So it's interesting that at the end of the book he invites Inga's father over to their house to talk about the war, In the end, Marjorie stands up to Bernadette, Her father's message is that war is bad, not people, so you must forgive and forget, Marjorie lives in Detroit in thes, a decade that has been depicted as placid and "normal"when the wars were over and America was Great, but M's life is pretty full of confusing things.
Her best friend is pulling all kinds of stunts, her mom is hiding "subversive" books under the bed, and there seem to be enemies everywhere, Sara Holbrook's first novel, based on her own experiences as a young girl in a world as complex as the one we have today, Terrific! I read this book in a day, mostly because I was sick in bed and had time, but it was good, so I didn't get a ton of sleeping done.
I was not familiar with this author but she has got some depth to her I am appreciating, I am going to scout out some of her other books as well, Definitely do read the final Author's Note, which make you appreciate her story even more, I am not very familiar with this time period but have read some about the war, . . and the quotable I will be writing down in my Keepers book is also from the Author's Note, the "What I have learned from all this, . . "
Oh, and I also came across this book because it was part of the reading challenge at myth grade daughter's school, She hasn't read it yet but she will say, I think, that it reminds her of Night Divided, Number the Stars or a Gratz book, History but in the moment feelings and decisions and responses, She will like it. Surprisingly good little book for kids which is uncomfortable in its timliness under the Trump administration, It's a story about friendships and loyalty and being nice, couched in the's era of McCarthyism, suspicions of neighbors, and threats of nuclear annihilation, There is discussion of war and postwar feelings toward those who were once deemed the enemy, Also, it touches on book banninga particularly loathsome activity, and good to highlight, I should add, that the author does a nice job of recreating that erathough it is a bit before my time, much of it rang true either for me or from stories from my mom.
She also touched on the feelings between different groups whether immigrants or their descendants based on their nationalities, as well as between people of different religions, There was a little touch on sexism but there is no discussion of race though this takes place in Detroit, but this latter is explained by the author in the afterwarddue to the segregation in that city.
Okay, four and a half, really, I had a few minor quibbles, For example, Ferguson is not, in my experience, an Irish name, It's Scotttish. But Bernadette Ferguson and her mother are absolutely believable charactersbullies, both, and very punctilious,
yearold Marjorie, the main character, is best friends with Bernadette, So she worries when she's stuck sitting next to the new girl, Inga, from Canada, Inga is a German refugee, and many in Detroit, including Marjorie's father, still bear the scars of the war, What's more, the red scare is in full swing, It doesn't take long for Bernadette to start plotting against the new girl, and she expects Marjorie to join in, But Marjorie starts to realize that, German or no, she likes and respects Inga,
Marjorie is a very real young girl, and I loved the family relationships and the difficult early adolescent friendships, Marjorie's mom is a real heroine!
Summing up, this is very well crafted historical fiction that will also appeal to fans of realistic fiction and family stories.
There's drama and tension and humor and some very positive messages that arise naturally from the story, And the characters are memorable, I also appreciated the author's note explaining her childhood in Detroit and the similarities and differences from the novel, Well done. I loved this book! Set in thes and told through the lens of a middle school girl, Marjorie is dealing with some big issues the Cold War, McCarthyism, banned library books, her father's PTSD, mean girls with slam books, a new student from Germany, and a new older brother living in the basement her family took in when he was orphaned.
My favorite character was her strong mother who went to college in an era when many women did not and when jobs for women were listed separately in the classified section.
From page:
"My mother's a college graduate,
It's true.
It happened during the war because her daddy didn't want her hands turning dirty in a factory helping the war effort, so he sent her off to a safe place with ivy all over it.
She never lies about going to college, but she doesn't bring it up either, Probably because, like Dad says, it doesn't help her do the dishes any better than the next woman, It's almost a family secret, like a birthmark or my grandpap's horsethieving uncle who had his name cut out of the family Bible, Something we don't talk about, "
And I loved her mother's commentary on the importance of books!
From pages:
"She talks fast, 'You asked me why I went to college and the answer is because Grandpa Henry told me to go, But you didn't ask me what I learned there, I learned this: Books, like the books upstairs, they stretch your brain, so there's enough room for lots of ideas: good ideas, bad ideas, ideas different than the ideas you grow up with.
From those ideas you can make your own ideas, different ideas, Different is a good way to be, Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, When people try too hard to be the same, that's when the shooting starts, "
This book is on theMaine Student Book Award list and we have it in our Learning Commons collection thanks to Junior Library Guild, .