Rose Under Fire

Wein, Elizabeth. Rose Under Fire. 2013. 360p. ISBN 978-142318469-0. Available at FIC WEI on the library shelves.

In this companion volume to Code Name Verity, Rose is an American teen pilot as well as an amateur poet. Tasked with flying planes from one location to the other, she has been flying since 1943 and though the war is real, with V1 bombs falling on England from the skies. Rose is friends with Maddie, who is also a pilot and whose best friend was killed in a botched escape attempt from a Nazi convoy.

Asked to fly a damaged observation plane from Paris back to England to get it fixed, Rose is forced to land in Germany and is quickly captured by German soldiers. Turned over to the SS, she is imprisoned at Ravensbrück, the notorious death camp for women. Having arrived with a truckload of French resistance women, she herself is therefore considered French.

Life is threadbare, horrific, and violent at Ravensbrück. Rose meets the Rabbits, a group of Polish girls who were gruesomely experimented on by Nazi doctors. Taken under her wing by Lisette, a matronly French woman, Rose can only count on her friendship with these women to save her life. Sustained by her poetry and by the vain hope of surviving her captors’ viciousness, Rose loses sight of days.

As more and more women become crowded in the limited space of the concentration camp, life becomes unbearable. Is Rose strong enough to make it one more day? The author of this book also cowrote American Wings: Chicago's Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky.