Anne Blankman

"On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work, Chernobyl, has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person....

In 1933, eighteen-year-old Gretchen, niece of Adolph Hitler, reunites with her Jewish boyfriend when she leaves the safety of England to return to Germany to investigate a murder and expose the evil of the Nazi regime.