Beneath the Snow of Gnojnik

Michal is only a boy when the Germans invade his native Poland. Before long, he is uprooted from his family farm, with no idea of the fate of his mother and his siblings, or means of finding out, and sent to Germany to serve as slave labour on a farm. There he works with his friend, Callum, who becomes the only family Michal has in the world, and to whom he remains close even when the war is over. Bernice, meanwhile, grows up on her family's Australian farm learning to help out with all manner of necessary tasks. The lives of these two young children, Michal and Bernice, turn out to be intertwined in ways which no one could ever have anticipated - and which, in this tender, tragic, yet also triumphant novel, readers will follow with ever closer attention.