The Enemy's Daughter - Softcover

Blankman, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593623053 ISBN 13: 9780593623053

Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

In the spirit of Lauren Wolk and Ruta Sepetys comes the tale of a girl fighting her way back home after surviving the sinking of the Lusitania—and learning to think for herself rather than accept the prejudice of wartime.

The year is 1915 and the world is at war. Marta and her father are passengers on the Lusitania, desperately trying to get back home to Germany. While aboard, they must keep their identities hidden or risk being mistaken for enemy spies. Then the Lusitania is attacked by a German submarine. They just make it off the sinking ship, but her father is discovered and detained. Marta suddenly finds herself alone in enemy land.

To survive, Marta must draw upon a deep well of bravery she never knew she had. Fortunately, she meets Clare, a young Irish girl who can talk a mile a minute, and her kind family. Believing that Marta is a Dutch refugee, they welcome her into their home. She can't risk letting her new friends know she's actually from Germany—the very nation that the Irish and English are fighting against. But could these people who have shown her nothing but kindness truly be her enemy? 

Sweeping from the Irish Sea to a cathedral city in England, this story shows us that friendship, especially in times of war, may be the greatest gift of all.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anne Blankman has loved to write stories for as long as she can remember. She grew up in Niskayuna, New York, where she met a classmate who had survived Chernobyl and who eventually inspired Anne to write The Blackbird Girls. They are still friends to this day. Currently, Anne lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, Mike, her daughter, Kirsten, and two rescue cats. For several years, she worked as a children's librarian but now she writes full-time. When she isn't writing, Anne likes to spend time with her family, read, travel, knit, and go for long runs. She loves hearing from readers, and you can visit her at AnneBlankman.com or @AnneBlankman.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One
The Celtic Sea, off the coast of Ireland
Friday, May 7, 1915

Marta leaned back against the ship’s railing as far as she could go without falling over the side. Knowing exactly how much she could stretch herself before toppling into the sea was a talent, she had told Papa when he had caught her doing it yesterday and scolded her. It was recklessness, he had replied, but he had spoken with a smile, which was how she had known he wasn’t angry. These days, she was never sure how he would react.Now she craned her neck, straining to see the ship’s four funnels. They looked like enormous red stripes against the blue sky. Aha! Yet again, only three of them were smoking.Ever since they left New York six days ago, only three of the funnels had been choking out smoke. That meant the men in the boiler room belowdecks weren’t putting coal into the fourth furnace, didn’t it? Was that furnace broken? If it was, it should have been fixed by now, for it hadn’t been used once during the journey, and the Lusitania was a luxury ship, where people expected and paid for the best service. Papa had said so, and he always told her the truth, even if it was scary.Marta thought of the board outside the dining room, where the ship’s daily bulletin was posted. The previous day’s mileage was typed at the bottom of the slip of paper. At supper on Monday night, four days ago, she had seen that the ship had traveled 501 miles the day before. All through the soup, and the braised ham, and the nuts and cheese, and finally the chocolate pudding, she had puzzled over the number. Captain Turner had said the ship was capable of twenty-­five knots. That was almost thirty miles an hour. There were twenty-­four hours in a day, which meant that the day before, Sunday, the ship should have traveled seven hundred miles.Instead, it had sailed nearly two hundred miles fewer.The crew was forcing the ship to travel slowly. She was sure of it. And it was a secret. She understood about secrets—­after all, she had been keeping a big one ever since she and Papa had boarded this ship, and that made her especially good at noticing when someone else was keeping one, too.But why was the crew making the ship go slowly?Frowning, she turned away from the railing. Up and down the promenade deck, children raced one another, laughing. Little girls in ruffled dresses and boys in shorts played with marbles or jacks. Stewardesses in gray or black gowns pushed babies in carriages.A boy with blond hair stood a few feet away. He had to be a teenager, maybe fifteen or sixteen, for he wore long trousers, not shorts, and there was the outline of a cigarette case in his jacket pocket.He was watching her.Marta froze. Had she done something wrong? Had he been able to tell that she wasn’t who she was pretending to be?No, that was impossible. She hadn’t spoken a word, so he hadn’t heard her accent, and she was wearing her American cousin’s white dress and blue sash, not her own green serge gown with its long skirts that Papa said would look foreign to the other passengers, who were mostly American, Canadian, English, or Irish. She had fixed her brown hair into two long braids that flowed down her back instead of twisting them around the crown of her head, as she did back home. Unless she talked, nobody should be able to guess she was German.The boy couldn’t have any idea about her real identity. She was still safe.“The funnels,” the boy said. He sounded English. “I’ve been noticing them, too.”He looked at her, clearly waiting for her to reply. Marta’s heart raced. If she stayed silent, she would appear rude. He might tell the other children or, even worse, his parents about the girl who had refused to speak to him. If she talked, she was less likely to appear unusual—­except then others would hear her accent.Whatever you do, don’t draw attention to yourself, Papa had whispered to her when they stood on the dock at Pier 54, waiting to board theLusitania.I won’t, she had promised, for she understood why they had to be inconspicuous. The instant anyone guessed they were German, they would be arrested and put in jail. Maybe forever.The boy was still looking at her. She had to say something.She thought of how her American cousin talked. Amelia had been born and raised in New York City, and she spoke so quickly that Marta had trouble keeping up with her. She stretched out the lettera, too.Well, so could Marta. She looked the boy in the eye and said as fast as she could, “Yeah, what about the funnels?”She must not have sounded strange, for he didn’t look surprised or worried. Instead, he shrugged. “My father said the crewmen have shut off one of the boiler rooms in an effort to conserve fuel.” He leaned closer, whispering, “But I think they’re going slowly on purpose to make us a target.”“A target for whom?” Marta asked.He tapped the side of his nose, indicating that it was a secret. “The Germans. They’ve stationed submarines around England and Ireland. And everyone knows we sailed into a war zone today. Captain Turner warned us about it, in the first-­class lounge after supper.”Marta glared at the boy. Her countrymen would never attack a civilian ship! Yes, Germany and Great Britain were at war, along with France, and Poland, and Russia, and Austria-­Hungary, and Serbia, and Japan, and so many countries that she couldn’t remember them all. They were battling over borders and treaties and politics and other things she didn’t understand.What she did understand, though, was that Germany was her homeland, and she would love and defend it always.“Germans would not hurt a ship filled with innocent people,” she snapped.The boy pulled a coin from his pocket and began tossing it up in the air and catching it. “Don’t be silly. Of course they would. And that’s exactly what England hopes they’ll do.”This boy was awful! Marta turned away from him. The English were greedy—­after all, they had dozens of colonies and were always trying to get more land and more people under their control. Papa said England was known as the empire where the sun never set, for it spanned the globe and it was always daylight somewhere in its territories. The English's greediness was part of the reason her country was at war with them, she knew. And, of course, England and France were allies, and France had been trying for years to weaken Germany, so naturally Germany couldn’t work with England. The reasons for the war went on and on, but whenever grown-­ups started talking about them, she stopped listening. Germany was her home, and England and France and Russia were Germany’s enemies, and that was all she needed to know.As far as she could see, the ocean stretched out, its surface glittering with sunlight. On the horizon, she glimpsed a green line. That must be Ireland! It couldn’t be long now until they arrived in England, less than a day perhaps, and then she and Papa would take a ship to Holland, and then a train to Germany, and then finally, finally be home in Berlin.“You didn’t ask why England wants the Germans to attack us,” the boy said from behind Marta.She didn’t reply. Let him decide she was rude. She didn’t care what he thought of her.“England wants America to join the war,” the boy continued. “If Germany attacks an English ship with American passengers, then America will definitely fight. And they’ll fight on the English side. So the crew’s making the ship go slowly, trying to provoke the Germans into bombing us.”She whirled around. The boy was leaning against the railing, flipping the coin....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593623053
• ISBN 13: 9780593623053
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 289
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: VIKING; https://www.penguin.com/overview-vikingbooks/; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY; New York; NY; 10019; USA
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