Wolves at the Door

Watkins, Steve. Wolves at the Door
December 3, 2024 by Scholastic Press
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Asta, her mother, and her younger sister Pieta leave Königsberg after the British bomb it in 1944, and go out to her grandparents'farm at the edge of the Romincka Forest to live. Her father is in the army, but they haven heard from him in a while. The grandparents have Wehrmacht guards who are supervising Allied prisoners of war who are working on the farm. As the war continues, the mother makes a plan to go to live with a cousin in Hamburg, and also shows the girls an abandoned cabin where they can hide if anything happens. One day, when the village is out hunting rabbits, the Red Army attacks, and the girls are glad to have the option. Their mother escapes and comes to get them, and tells them that their grandparents have perished. The three head north to get on a ship to cross the Baltic, and team up with Monika, her infant brother Riki, and father Herr Muller. They all secure tickets for the ship, and manage to fight the crowds to get on it. Sadly, the Wilhelm Gustloff is bombed by a Soviet submarine, and while the mother throws the girls onto a lifeboat, she perishes, like about 90% of the other people aboard. Along with Gerhard, a young boy who attaches himself to the girls, they are supposed to get on another ship, but head the other way and decide to go back to Königsberg. Since this is a good distance, Gerhard offers that his aunt and uncle have a farm near the Memel Forest, and after a lot of traveling, sometimes using abandoned carts, they manage to get there. The aunt and uncle are long gone, and there aren't many resources left in the house, but Pieta has suffered from frostbite, and having shelter is a boon. Asta and Gerhard hunt rabbits, bashing in their heads with rocks. They hide this from Pieta, because she is sensitive but really needs to eat. Gerhard is interested in the Lithuanian Forest Brothers, who are seen frequently in the woods around the farm, but they are no help when the Red Army attacks and burns down the house. They end up joining forces with a number of other children (the Wolfskinder), many of whom meet terrible ends. Eventually, Asta finds out from a soldier that Hitler is dead and the war is over, and she and Pieta decide to make the long journey to Hamburg to find their aunt. 

Strengths: Watkins has a couple books about war (Blood on the Road (2018) about Vietnam, and Sink or Swim (2017) about WWII), and brings an interesting twist to the stories. I haven't read too much about the war in the Baltics, but know that it was a particularly fraught situation. Asta and Pieta's experiences would have been all too common, and we see this from both of their perspectives. The way they interact with others on their journey and help each other gives a small spot of hopefulness in a very grim tale. There are several major historical occurrences mentioned, like the bombing of Königsberg, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and the children in the Memel Forest, which will be helpful in leading WWII enthusiasts to do further research. There are plenty of good details about life during this time period, and the message is very clear that war is not healthy for children and other living things. 

Weaknesses: I could have used more up front information about when this was set. I was able to look up when Christmas was on a Monday, and pin this to 1944. Even though I had a friend in the Wehrmacht and was in this general area, I still had to look up a lot of background information to help me understand what was going on. I also would have been just as happy to have the entire tale told from Asta's point of view, since Pieta was very young. 
What I really think: This is a very somber choice for older readers who like their World War II stories to have a survival aspect to them, like Nielsen's Lines of Courage, Skrypuch's Traitors Among Us, or Nannestad's We Are Wolves, which is also set in East Prussia.