The Light in Hidden Places - Sharon Cameron

I don't know that I would have found this book but for a book fair at my children's school and a daughter with an undying urge to spend every single dollar! Even if it means buying a book for her mom.

Hundreds of stories from the Holocaust have been shared throughout history, but the most powerful are those that give names of the victims, prisoners and survivors. The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron focuses on the experience of a young girl named Stefania. When we meet her, she is working in a market for the Diamants, a Jewish family. She and their son Izio are engaged, secretly, because she's Catholic and he's Jewish.

But as the war rages on and the German Army invades the city of Przemyśl, Poland, their secret engagement quickly becomes the least of their worries. With the Jews being forced into the ghetto, Stefania finds herself left with only her younger sister Helena to survive until the war is over.

After Izio's brother Max leaps from a train headed for a concentration camp, he finds Stefania and Helena, and they agree to keep him hidden. And if the three of them weren't already living in enough fear every single day, the much too small home soon becomes a hiding place for 12 more Jews. Some are part of Max's family and some are strangers to Stefania.

She's had many encounters with different officers, some threatening and some offering to help. She doesn't know which of them or her housemates to trust, if she can trust anyone at all. Stefania wakes each morning and falls asleep each night waiting for the Gestapo to knock on, or kick in, her door at any moment and kill all of them. If they don't die before then from starvation or illness. They barely make enough money to buy food, and with over a dozen people in the house, what is enough? Typhus spread through the ghetto, and eventually makes its way to the rat-infested 'room' Max has built in the attic for himself and his roommates. 

The level of intensity throughout this novel rises quickly and stays at a 10. I was wondering with every single flip of a page if Stefania, Helena and their secret residents would be discovered and killed. 

The Light in Hidden Places details horrific events that are part of our world's history. The descriptions of the levels of torture and punishment people experienced, young and old, male and female, are vivid and heartbreaking. People, including children, being slaughtered, hanged and shot to death in the street. The sound of bullets whizzing by and bombs exploding all around. Continuously learning that another one of your loved ones was found dead. 

Thousands perished during the Holocaust. Cameron handles Stefania's story with care and has written it with compassion. Stefania fought for her survival and that of others and truly is a heroine.