The Lion's Run by Sara Pennypacker

From a literary standpoint, our small library in Ferguson is not a sleepy place. In a steady stream throughout the year we add thousands of carefully chosen new books of every variety to our collection. Here is one that I immediately checked out for myself as soon as we acquired it last week; it looked so appealing. And what a story it tells! This novel - written as historical fiction for middle schoolers - grabbed me in the first words and drew me right into a tense and dangerous world: that of Nazi-occupied France in 1944. 

Thirteen-year-old Lucas Dubois - so named because he was found in the woods as an infant (dubois meaning "of the woods") - lives in an orphanage. Daily life is routine and tedious, everyone is always hungry, and a couple of the other boys are a constant menace to him. After he gets a job delivering produce to local institutions in his small French village, however, the quality of his life begins to change dramatically. The people this lonely boy encounters and the relationships he builds outside of the orphanage begin to elevate a life that had previously seemed to hold very little promise. 

The German occupiers in his village have imposed a suffocating stranglehold on everyday life. On his vegetable delivery rounds, Lucas begins to see things that disturb him. He sometimes hears secrets discussed among adults who don't always notice this quiet boy as he makes the daily deliveries. Before long, he has seen and heard enough to compel him to join the underground resistance to the Nazis. The more deeply this resourceful boy gets involved in subterfuge, the more dangerous life becomes.

The Lion's Run is categorized for readers aged 8 to 12. A good story is a good story however, and this suspenseful and beautifully written novel has a universal appeal not restricted to age. 

I have read many novels about the Second World War and I have hiked mountain trails on the French side of the German-French border, where some of that war's most vicious conflicts were carried out and where barbed wire, stone and iron remnants of it are still prominent along the mountain trails. In this novel I learned more than I ever knew about the Germans' systematically brutal and exploitive treatment of the French during that war. Moreover I found unsettling echoes of some of the worldwide threats on today's horizons: the rise of racial supremacy sentiments in both the US and Europe, fears about people's safety, the official aggressions, detainments and deportations of people the government deems undesirable, the increasing US use of government surveillance on citizens, and the race-based pronatalism expressed by white supremacists. There are echoes of The Handmaid's Tale in this novel, as the Germans under Hitler were indoctrinated that "boy babies are only future soldiers and girls are only future mothers of more soldiers." Therefore in order to replenish the German population, during this military occupation thousands of teenage French girls were systematically romanced and impregnated by German soldiers and then separated from their babies. 

In an echo of that human predicament, even the poor orphanage cat - "a good mouser" - was immediately, forlornly separated from the kittens she bore each year - though for the opposite purpose. I also learned things about horses I'd never known, and fell deeply for one particularly winning horse in this novel.

After extraordinary twists and turns, the book concludes with an ending that is triumphant for Lucas and sad for other characters. The story's end is a new beginning for him, leaving him with much more confidence in himself and his future. 

This is a book I didn't want to be done with. I want a sequel!

-Marianne W.