Search - One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York, 1938 (Dear America)

Like two books squished into one - first one is about how Julie's comfortable life in Vienna disintegrates after the Nazis take over Austria - as Jews, they lose everything. It's very dark and sad and then... Julie is sent to America, where she lives with her long-lost aunt, who is a Broadway star. The terrible things she's been through fall far into the background as her new life in New York takes center stage. Perhaps the point is that children are resilient, but I found it terribly disjointed and the second half to be unbelievable on many, many levels - you would think that in her diary, a young girl would express something about what she's been through other than "I don't want to think about it."

One of the worst Dear America books I've read - most of them are VERY well done. For a better take in a young adult book about the effects Anschluss on a young Jewish woman, try Eva Ibbotson's "The Morning Gift", I'm sure there's some other great ones out here too, but this one isn't one of them.