Bibliographic information:
Nolan, Han. If I should die before I wake. Harcourt Brace: San Diego, 1994. ISBN: 0-15-204679-8. 293 pages.

Age Level: Grades 9 and up.

Main characters: Hilary, a member of a teen neo-Nazi gang. Chana, a young girl who, along with her Polish family, is faced with the horrors of being a Jew in wartime Poland.

Setting: A room in a Jewish hospital, and Poland during World War II.

Plot: Hilary Burke has been severely injured in a motorcycle accident while riding with her boyfriend, Brad, the leader of a local neo-Nazi gang. The closest hospital is a Jewish hospital and Hilary is taken there, Nazi armband and all. In a strange twist of fate, Hilary is transported back through flashbacks to the German occupation of Poland where she becomes Chana. The story flips back and forth between Chana and Hilary with one major plot in each girl’s life. In Chana’s story she endures the full horror of being Jewish under Nazi rule which includes the complete dismantlement of her family, the horrors of the Lodz ghetto, and ultimately the hell of Auschwitz. Before her accident, Hilary helped to kidnap her Jewish neighbor, Simon, and he is trapped inside his locker at school. There is a large search underway to find him. Hilary also is wrestling with her relationship with her mother, who has a long history of nervous breakdowns and abandoning Hilary. She sits by Hilary’s bedside most of the story.

Related titles:
The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
The Diary of Anne Frank
All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein

Comments:
I wish this had been only Chana’s story. I have read a great number of Holocaust books and Nolan does an admirable job in recreating a fictitious character during that time. It is a moving story, and is well-paced. In contrast, I found Hilary’s character to be one-dimensional and a bit of a cliché. The chapter titles alternate between the girls’ names and every time I came to Hilary’s I wanted to skip it. Thankfully, most of the book focuses on Chana. The flashback device I thought was contrived, and the ending was too much of a stretch. Still, I’d recommend this book. The other day I came across a student who did not believe in the Holocaust and tried to counter every fact I told him. There can never be enough of these books as long as even one person denies the loss of millions, especially when those people are our students.

Reviewed by Bill Varner, Senior Editor, Stenhouse Publishers.