One Book, One Community 2017

It is once again time for One Book, One Community – Our Region Reads. Multiple copies of this year’s selection, Rose Under Fire, will be available beginning January 2017. Rose Under Fire is the unforgettable story of Rose Justice, a young pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. Author Elizabeth Wein spent her teen years in Harrisburg, PA and, after the loss of her mother in a car accident, turned to books as a way to deal with this unexpected tragedy. In fact, Elizabeth wrote her first novel at age 14.

About Rose Under Fire: Rose Justice is a young pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. On her way back from a semi-secret flight in the last days of the war, Rose is captured by the Germans and ends up in Ravensbrück: the notorious Nazi women’s concentration camp. There, she meets an unforgettable group of women, including a once glamorous and celebrated French detective novelist whose Jewish husband and three young sons have been killed; a resilient young girl who was a “Ravensbruck Rabbit” – a human guinea pig for Nazi doctors; and a Nachthexen, or Night Witch, a female fighter pilot and military ace for the Soviet air force. These damaged women must bond together to help each other survive.

If you enjoy Rose Under Fire, you may also like its companion novel Code Name Verity, also about young female pilots in World War II. The books read as stand-alone novels and you do not have to read them in any particular order.