Two Suns in the Sky
Star-crossed lovers are the stuff of romantic dreams, but  inTwo Suns in the SkyMiriam Bat-Ami pursues this theme in  an unlikely setting: the grim refugee camp at Oswego, New York,  during World War II. Chris Cook, 15, is fed up with the boring  town of Oswego but is fascinated by the exotic strangers living so  close by. She and her friends sneak into the camp where she meets  Adam Bornstein, a Yugoslavian Jew. "For stony limits cannot hold  love out," says Shakespeare, and neither can the quarantine fences  around the Emergency Refugee Shelter. The two fall passionately in  love, in spite of their differences of language and religion--and  the angry resistance of Chris's father to anything "foreign."  Their voices, as distinctly different as their cultures, alternate  in telling the story of their ill-fated attraction.Miriam Bat-Ami, like Norma Fox Mazer inGood Night,  Maman, has drawn on a forgotten piece of American history  for her setting: the Emergency Refugee Shelter, the U.S.  government's sole attempt to rescue Jews fleeing Hitler's  persecution. Bat-Ami captures the collision of cultures in not  only the poignant love story, but in the complex emotions of the  townspeople, whose good will is tempered by a naive suspicion of  strangers, and in the mixed feelings of the refugees themselves,  whose gratitude for a place of warmth and shelter is dimmed by  their frustration at finding themselves corralled behind barbed  wire in the supposed land of the free. Quotations from former  residents of the camp and a substantial Author's Note add to the  strong authenticity of this intriguing novel. (Ages 11 to 15)--Patty Campbell--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.