When this mid­dle-grade nov­el begins, it is July 1942 in Paris. Twelve-year-old Miri and her fam­i­ly fled Berlin after Kristall­nacht, los­ing their home to fire. They expe­ri­enced numer­ous anti­se­mit­ic episodes and saw roundups of Jews who were about to be deport­ed to a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Miri reach­es Paris while car­ing for a tod­dler, Nora, whose moth­er has com­mit­ted Nora to her care. Miri is res­cued by a nun who tries to keep her safe­ly hid­den in a con­vent; but, against Miri’s wish­es, Nora is removed from her care. Although she is told that Nora is safe with a fam­i­ly, Miri, now called Marie, is dis­traught, hav­ing promised Nora’s moth­er she would care for her. Miri, who must keep her true iden­ti­ty secret from the Nazis, feels a deep sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty for Nora and is deter­mined to res­cue her.

Miri attends a con­vent school, where she builds rela­tion­ships with the stu­dents and the nuns. She expe­ri­ences life in the Cas­tle de Chenon­ceau and its gar­dens, encoun­ters the ghost of Cather­ine de Medici, and helps oth­er Jew­ish refugees get to Vichy, France. She also man­ages to res­cue Nora with the help of the nuns, and final­ly engi­neers their escape.

Mid­dle-grade read­ers who feel that they don’t fit in or have things to hide will iden­ti­fy with Miri, who needs to present her­self one way in order to pro­tect her­self. There are some tense moments, but over­all, The Night War is filled with excite­ment, dar­ing, and hero­ism. A beau­ti­ful­ly drawn map shows the impor­tant sites men­tioned in the book. There is also an epi­logue that includes a brief his­to­ry of actu­al peo­ple and events, and lists the names of the real chil­dren from the Plet­zl School in Paris whose lives were lost. In the author’s note, Bradley con­cludes, ​“I wrote this sto­ry, in large part, to hon­or the mem­o­ries of these chil­dren and the brav­ery inside every sin­gle one of them.”