Why a Booktrail?
1939: Two sisters are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis
Faraway Island
What you need to know before your trail
It’s the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She’s happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who’s as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.
Locations
ResetTravel 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.
The two girls are sent to very different families and are to have very different experiences.
“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 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: A Faraway Island
Destination: Gothenburg Author/Guide: Annika Thor Departure Time: 1939
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
