They Went Left

Now in paperback comes the tour de force historical mystery from Monica Hesse, the bestselling and award-winning author of Girl in the Blue Coat.

Germany, 1945. Eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman is alive, but not whole. Her body is just beginning to heal from the trauma of the Holocaust, her mind is broken, and her life is shattered. She knows that she will never see her beloved parents, grandmother, or aunt again-she watched as they were all sent to the left, to the gas chambers, at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only she and her younger brother Abek were sent to the right, and her last words to him were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. And we will be whole, and everything will be fine. I promise I will find you.

Desperate to find Abek, fulfill her vow, and rebuild their lives, Zofia's search brings her to their hometown in Poland and then deep into a displaced persons camp in Germany. There, Zofia meets fellow Holocaust survivors, each battling with their painful pasts and working towards different futures. There's Briene, eager to marry her new beau and start a new life; Miriam, searching far and wide for the twin she was separated from at liberation, who was the victim of horrible experiments; and Josef, who picks fights with bullies and refuses to talk about his past, but whose good looks and unexpected honesty draw Zofia in.

The deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? And if she does find him, how can she know that it's her Abek? After surviving unimaginable horrors, Zofia must now delve into a mystery whose answers could break her--or help her rebuild her world.