Holbrook, Sara. The
Enemy. Calkins Creek 2017 256p $17.95 ISBN 978-1-62979-498-3 ms/hs
Historical Fiction E-BN
It is 1953, and Marjorie
is a 12-year-old girl living in Detroit with her father, a shell-shocked
veteran of World War Two, her college-educated mother, her little sister, and
Frank, a teenager who lost his father in the war. At school, she experiences
air-raid drills, hears talk about the Cold War, and learns from her girlfriends
that all Germans are Nazis and that girls cannot become doctors. The era of the
50s is invoked on every page, and I found only two anachronisms: toward the end
of the book, one girl says to another “It isn’t about you,” which nobody said
back in the 1950s. The other anachronism is Marjorie’s mother telling her
daughter “Breathe”. Nobody said that back in the 1950s either.
However, in general, the era is very faithfully portrayed, and the fear of the times is strongly invoked: fear of Communism, the Bomb, subversive literature, and independent thought.
Marjorie is a believable protagonist, as are the other characters. They are all flawed human beings, but in most cases they are doing their best to move on after the trauma of the war to make better lives for themselves. The author has extensive notes at the end of the book, describing her own childhood in Detroit and discussing her inspiration for the story.
This is a great realistic and historical novel for those readers who enjoy the genre. Recommended for middle- and high-school collections.
Summary: In this novel,
which takes place in the early 1950s, Marjorie lives in Detroit with her family
and struggles to make up her mind about all the things she sees around her ...
censorship, McCarthyism, and xenophobia in the wake of the second world war.
