The narrative is largely based on her father’s life. Her back matter notes she has relied on oral histories and memoir to research the time and place. Meyer presents a wartime New York City through the eyes of a refugee. Throughout, he continues to wonder about the whereabouts of his friend Marcel, and Saint-Georges correspondent Nicole keeps him informed through code words in her letters. He doesn’t understand how discrimination against African-Americans and Jews could exist in America it reminds him of Nazism. He joins the Franco-American Boy Scout troop and finds a friend in African-American classmate September Rose Walker. Gustave enters Joan of Arc Junior High and struggles with learning English and the American way of life which differs so markedly from pre-war or wartime France. In this sequel to Black Radishes, wartime refugee Gustave Becker arrives on a Portuguese ship in Baltimore in January 1942 with his parents, his cousin and his mother.
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