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Summary
Summary
Don't miss Elizabeth Wein's stunning new novel, Stateless
Emilia and Teo's lives changed in a fiery, terrifying instant when a bird strike brought down the plane their stunt pilot mothers were flying. Teo's mother died immediately, but Em's survived, determined to raise Teo according to his late mother's wishes-in a place where he won't be discriminated against because of the color of his skin. But in 1930s America, a white woman raising a black adoptive son alongside a white daughter is too often seen as a threat.
Seeking a home where her children won't be held back by ethnicity or gender, Rhoda brings Em and Teo to Ethiopia, and all three fall in love with the beautiful, peaceful country. But that peace is shattered by the threat of war with Italy, and teenage Em and Teo are drawn into the conflict. Will their devotion to their country, its culture and people, and each other be their downfall or their salvation?
In the tradition of her award-winning and bestselling Code Name Verity , Elizabeth Wein brings us another thrilling and deeply affecting novel that explores the bonds of friendship, the resilience of young pilots, and the strength of the human spirit.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-In her latest World War II-era novel, Wein returns to themes of aviation and the enduring bonds of platonic love and friendship. Best friends Rhoda, a white Quaker, and African American Delia were "barnstorming" pilots, a team who performed in air shows across the United States as White Raven and Black Dove, their children, Emilia and Teo, in tow. When Delia is killed in a plane crash, Rhoda commits to fulfilling Delia's dream for Teo-to live in a land where he wouldn't be judged by the color of his skin-and moves them all to Ethiopia, where Teo's father was born. Life on the coffee farm at Tazma Meda is wonderful, especially since Rhoda is teaching the children to fly, but rumors of invasion by Italy become reality, and bureaucratic snafus mean that the family can't leave the country. Then the war becomes even more personal when all young men of Ethiopian heritage are conscripted. Wein continues to present multidimensional characters within her effortless prose. VERDICT Highly recommended for all libraries, especially where her previous titles have flown off the shelves.-Stephanie Klose, School Library Journal (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Wein returns to Africa, the setting of her Lion Hunters series, with protagonists who share an avocation with those in her award-winning novels Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire. Delia and Rhoda are stunt pilots, barnstorming the American countryside in the 1920s, each with a child in tow. When Delia is killed during an air show, Rhoda commits to fulfilling their dream of raising Teo, whose father was Ethiopian, in a place where he won't be discriminated against because of his skin color. Rhoda resettles Teo and her own daughter, Emilia, at an Ethiopian coffee plantation just as Haile Selassie takes power-and as Mussolini's troops prepare for an invasion. The novel, which opens with the knowledge that Teo is missing, is constructed as a series of letters, school essays, flight logs, and excerpts of fantasy stories written by Teo and Emilia, all of which Emilia is sending to Selassie in a plea for help. While the conceit tests credulity, Wein brings this fascinating period in history to life with several well-engineered plot twists, lots of high-flying, nail-biting tension, and meticulous research. Ages 12-up. Agent: Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Weins newest novel, set in Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, is in good company with her much-lauded Code Name Verity (rev. 5/12) and Rose Under Fire (rev. 11/13). Em (white) and Teo (black) have grown up together, their mothers American stunt-pilots who met after World War I. After Teos mother Delia dies in a crash, Ems mother moves the family to Ethiopia -- in part, to fulfill Delias dream for her son to live in the land of his father, where his skin color wont bring discrimination. Em and Teo love Ethiopia and the cooperative coffee farm where Momma works as nurse and pilot; but when Mussolinis Italian military moves to take over the country, their own skills as pilots come into play in ways they -- and the reader -- could never have anticipated. Wein elegantly weaves a complexity of political and cultural understanding into her plot and characters; she provides adventure and intrigue, surprising turns of plot (and flight), sober historical foundation, and two affecting protagonists. The intellectual, psychological, and emotional substance of this story is formidable, and Wein makes it all approachable and engaging. deirdre f. baker (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Wein returns to Ethiopia, the setting of her Arthurian adventures, for a high-flying novel about the 1935 Italian invasion.Emilia Menotti and Teodros Dupr share no DNA, but they are otherwise as close as siblings could be. Their aviator mothers had performed together as barnstormers Black Dove and White Raven until a bird strike killed Teo's mother as the two women were preparing to immigrate to Ethiopia, where Teo's father had come from. Alone, Momma raises them on a remote coffee cooperative, an idyll cut short as tensions rise between the independent African nation and Italy, whose colonies border it. Wein does again what she did so beautifully in Code Name Verity (2012) and Rose Under Fire (2013): She plaits together the historical record, her passion for flying and ferociously vivid characters to create a heartbreaking adventure that grounds readers in the moment even as geopolitical complexity threatens to knock them off their feet. The story is pieced together from a combination of documents; Emmy's opening begging Haile Selassie for help is followed by a collection of the two teens' writings, including childhood stories, themes written for the cooperative school and long, diarylike flight logs. This device does not create as seamless a narrative as in her previous two books, and Emmy's and Teo's voices are often hard to tell apart, but Wein's forceful prose will carry readers past any sense of contrivance. Unforgettable. (Historical fiction. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* A good piece of historical fiction is a taut balancing act, and Wein walks a high-wire in her latest. Deftly weaving in details about the Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, she traces the stunning story of Teo and Emilia, not related by blood but as good as brother and sister, who came to live in Ethiopia in 1930, just as tensions begin to build between the free African nation and the Italians occupying neighboring Eritrea and Somaliland. Told through their essays, journal entries, flight logs, and a series of adventure stories they authored together, Em and Teo's story is presented as an entreaty to the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, in a brazen attempt (helped along by Em's gift of a stolen Italian plane) to guarantee their safe departure from the country after the war escalates to dangerous heights. It's a bit of an understatement to say that Teo and Em had an unconventional childhood. They grew up on the road in the U.S. with their inseparable mothers, African American Delia and white Rhoda, who performed a high-flying daredevil act as Black Dove and White Raven. The barnstorming foursome is mostly content, but Delia and Teo, whose late father was Ethiopian, face prejudice in America and long for life in Ethiopia, where Teo can be treated with respect and even honor. Moving to Africa is a long, complicated process, but it becomes even more complicated when Delia is killed in an accident. Rhoda, utterly heartbroken by her flying partner's death, is left to raise Teo and Em, whose Italian father is stationed in East Africa, on her own, but she still holds tight to Delia's dream, determined to bring Em and Teo to Ethiopia to prove Delia's idea is a good one. And at first, it is. In their new home at Beehive Hill Farm, a cooperative coffee plantation, Teo and Em have a stable community, go to school, and write extensively, from essays recounting their experiences to comics-inspired, high-flying adventure stories starring their fictional personas, Black Dove (Teo), who can render himself invisible, and White Raven (Em), who is a master of disguise and derring-do. But the fantasy of their adventure stories can't hold water forever, and their romantic vision starts to crack. Ethiopia is certainly better for Teo, who is not threatened with violence or prejudice because of the color of his skin, but it's not an easy place for outspoken Em, since it was a lot harder being a girl in Ethiopia than it was in Pennsylvania. And though they find an easy home at Beehive Hill, elsewhere in the country they're ferenji, or foreign. But nothing is as destructive, of course, as the growing threat of Italian invasion and Haile Selassie's conscription of all Ethiopian men, which puts Teo, who is Ethiopian by birth, in real danger. War really comes home to Teo and Em when Rhoda starts teaching the teens to fly on their own. After Delia's death, Rhoda swore that Teo and Em would never pilot planes, but to protect Teo, she changes her tune: Ethiopia's troops, armed with spears and machetes, were hopelessly unprepared for the Italian air force, and a pilot's license means Teo would never face ground combat. As the war builds to a frightening crescendo, Wein truly demonstrates her masterful hand. While subtly remarking on the politics of the conflict and touching on key historical events, she keeps the narrative firmly grounded in Teo and Em's experiences, in particular their growing anger not only over the Italian invasion but the dream their mothers got so wrong. Em and Teo are beautifully well-rounded characters, and the confessional quality of the writing is the perfect vehicle for their complex, changing feelings about Ethiopia and what constitutes a home. Is it family? community? faith? country? heritage? Wein never lands too heavily on any one in particular. Rather, she emphasizes how interweaving complexities create robust but fraught lines of connection that carry tremendous power: Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion. Like Em and Teo's tangled history, Ethiopia's is an intricate crosshatch of tradition, progress, conflict, and rich heritage, and Wein gracefully pilots both piercing stories, highlighting the unique circumstances of Ethiopia in the 1930s and the ubiquitous experience of two teens trying to find their places in the world.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
historical fiction, especially historical fiction for young adults, presents many challenges for a writer, not least of them this one: While history is decidedly political, novels are decidedly not political treatises. To ignore the politics of history is naïve - and what novelist wants to be that? On the other hand, objectivity is an undesirable trait in a literary work. Point of view is very serious business. Elizabeth Wein's latest book, "Black Dove White Raven," is a historical novel set against the backdrop of Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and it does not shunt aside the complex geopolitics of its moment. When I dived into the book, I at first feared it might collapse under its own ambition. I needn't have worried. Wein, the author of "Rose Under Fire" and the Printz Honor and Edgar Award recipient "Code Name Verity," is more than up to the task she sets herself. Her tale begins with two women who make a living as stunt pilots, traveling with flying circuses across the United States. They are known as the Black Dove and the White Raven. Delia, "the better pilot," does the aerial acrobatics, while Rhoda specializes in wing-walking, because she's "not scared of getting out of a flying machine and riding it like a horse when it was in the air." Delia is a black woman whose Ethiopian husband died of influenza just after the birth of their son, Teodros, who is called Teo. Rhoda, a white Quaker from rural Pennsylvania, has a daughter from her marriage to an Italian airman she'd met in France during the Great War. Though the husbands' nationalities play a large role in the movement of the novel, its emotional weight comes from the relationship between Delia and Rhoda, and the bond between their children. Emilia and Teo become the heart of the book. The story takes off when Delia, tired of American segregationist attitudes, decides that the family could build a better life in Ethiopia, where Teo's father was born. Too many societal rules constrain her family, and she yearns to find a place where they might be offered the possibility of belonging. As Delia observes, "Ethiopia is a country of African people run by Africans," as well as "the only country in Africa never to be colonized!" But Delia is killed by a bird strike as she lands a plane. Her death sends Rhoda into a downward emotional spiral, and for a time she barely manages to care for Em and Teo. When she is strong enough, she sets out to complete Delia's dream. By then, Em and Teo are de facto siblings, themselves "a double act," as Em puts it. When they arrive in Ethiopia, the loss of Delia is somehow lessened by the beautiful land around them. "The only thing that has ever come close to filling that hole," Em says, "is the African sky, and that is why we live here now." But Em and Teo find themselves in the middle of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that will prove a harbinger of World War II. They are caught up in unavoidable political storms, aware that they have little control over their own destinies. In the end, their survival depends on Rhoda teaching both her children to fly, something she does reluctantly. Delia's death has left its psychic scars on her. Wein's novel is full of wonderful surprises. She does not shrink from confronting the large, difficult themes that are an integral part of the historical moment she is recounting: racism, war, colonialism, slavery, citizenship and religion. That she manages to handle all of these themes with such grace is admirable. Wein has always known how to spin a plot - and in "Black Dove White Raven" she does not disappoint. But most important, she knows how to create characters the reader cares about. It is thrilling to accompany Em and Teo as they learn to fly. Some of the most powerful scenes in the novel take place in the air. From there, we are given a view not only of the African landscape, but of the quiet fears and ambitions of her characters. As Em observes, "Doing the thing you are scared of is much harder than not being afraid of anything. It is easy to be brave. It is not so easy to be scared and do a brave thing anyway." Wein takes us on quite a flight in "Black Dove White Raven." Her takeoff is perhaps a little bumpy. But once she gets us in the air, we hold our breaths and soar. We delight in the view. And the landing? It's smooth, almost delicate. We are a little sad to have reached our destination. BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ is the author of many books for adults and children. His most recent novel for young adults is "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe."