May 1, 2019
At the cusp of the twentieth century, six-year-old Frederick van der Watt is torn from the home he loves, near Ventersburg in South Africa, and delivered to the horrors of the Bloemfontein concentration camp set up by the British. The scorched-earth policy of the Boer Wars leaves him and his mother homeless, estranged as they are from Fred's dad, Samuel. Mom Sarah finds small solace in keeping a diary, modeled after that of a real-life Bloemfontein survivor. The horrors Fred and Sarah encounter parallel those faced by another boy, Willem, decades later. The gay teen must face his own brand of torture at the hands of a Colonel who promises to make men out of boys at a camp called New Dawn Safari Rangers. At times, the connections between the two stories seem tenuous, but Barr's promising debut is an unblinking look at the terrors humankind can perpetrate to squash the other. As hard-hitting as the acts of violence are, more insidious is the evil that seeps into the system that aids and abets atrocities.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)