Teens Haruko, a Japanese American, and Margot, a German American, form a life-changing friendship as everything around them starts falling apart in the Crystal City family internment camp during World War II. 1944. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado-- until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. At the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment...

Sixteen-year-old Catholic Stefania Podgórska has worked in the Diamant family's grocery store in for four years, even falling in love with one of their sons, Izio; but when the Nazis came to Przemsyl, Poland, the Jewish Diamants are forced into the ghetto (and worse) and only Izio's brother Max manages to escape, and Stefania embarks on a dangerous course--protecting thirteen Jews in her attic, caring for her younger sister, Helena, and keeping everything...

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel -- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.