The Night Sparrow

When author Shelly Sanders learned about the Central Women’s Sniper Training School, established in 1942 in Moscow during what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War (WWII), she felt compelled to research the lives of the little-known, courageous women who attended the school and fought the Nazis. The Night Sparrow is Sanders’s compelling and disturbing fictionalized account, which includes real historical personages and events, of what she discovered.

When the Nazis invade Russia, Elena Bruskina and her Jewish family are herded into the Minsk ghetto. Elena’s father and brother are murdered, as are thousands of other Jews. Though Elena does all she can to help her mother and others stay alive, she is powerless against the Nazis’ unspeakable horrors. When her mother is killed, Elena is truly cast adrift, with no family to root her. Hatred for the oppressor spurs her on to seek vengeance. But how?

When Elena hears about the Central Women’s Sniper Training School, she goes to Moscow to enroll. There she meets a contingent of women, each with her own story and motivation for aspiring to be a sniper. Elena’s bond with the women grows, and she finds a home in her new family of comrades who face life-and-death situations and strive to help each other survive.

But even as her connectedness to the other snipers and her commitment to avenge the deaths of her family members is strengthened, Elena is plagued by persistent existential and spiritual questions. While serving as a translator, she reads a folder of confiscated enemy documents which urge Nazi soldiers to kill any Russian or Soviet, whether an old man or woman, a young girl or boy. She compares that to Josef Stalin’s orders urging soldiers and civilians to kill Germans. Elena is overwhelmed by the similarity and absurdity of the commands, realizing that “we’ve lost our ethical compass.”

Elena becomes increasingly aware that Hitler and Stalin are “cut from the same cloth.” However, she realizes that to voice her opinion could lead to imprisonment or even death. As she navigates her newfound insights into the tyranny experienced in both political systems, she faces another injustice. She realizes that she and her female compatriots have no rights as they serve in the male-dominated military; they can be taken as “frontline wives” or sexually assaulted while their abusers walk free.

The Night Sparrow relates the history of a chillingly evil time period and is a stark reminder of the immeasurable spiritual, emotional, and societal costs of tyranny, no matter in what guise it appears. (Harper Perennial)