Guardian Angel — Lisa Hendrix Simmons

...but for many, it will never be over...

Red-haired, freckle-faced, green-eyed Markus worries about things that bother many middle-school boys: When will my body fill out? When will my voice lower? When will I grow body hair? He wants puberty to hurry up and do its job so he can hang with the cool kids. He doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about his grandmother's experiences during the Holocaust.

But when three of the A-listers ask him to work with them on their social studies Holocaust project, he sees his chance. He knows they want him on their team because of his ailing grandmother, who has a tattoo on her arm from her time in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He reluctantly decides to talk to her.

When Markus asks her about her time in Auschwitz, she violently refuses to discuss it. Her over-the-top reaction shocks Markus, and he's torn between his loyalty to her and the peer pressure at school. No matter what, though, he doesn't want to miss his chance to improve his social status.

When a classmate announces that his project will prove that the Holocaust never happened, Markus pictures his old, sick grandmother in the nursing home, and he vows to disprove the student's claim. A voice from the past accuses his grandmother of crimes during the Holocaust, and Markus's world quickly spirals out of control. Then, because of Markus's well-intentioned effort to find someone who knew his grandmother during the war, a stranger who knew her in Auschwitz surfaces with shocking and mysterious secrets, and Markus has to come to an entirely new understanding of what the truth actually is. Suddenly, the Holocaust is not just a chapter in his history book...it's his life.

Guardian Angel . . .

• watches a 13-year-old boy come to understand the lasting horrors of the Holocaust
• looks at peer pressure
• examines social status
• shows how life tests loyalty
• demonstrates how children become young adults
• questions assumptions
• proves that the Holocaust is still part of our lives

Guardian Angel . . .

. . . reveals how the inescapable past shapes our present and our future...

Guardian Angel . . .

. . . proves that the truth is never simple.

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