Tinas War by Laura Obolensky

The narrator of Tinas War is a bright, quick-witted and sensitive 10 year old Parisian who has been entrusted to the care of a modest family in the Champagne region after suffering from malnutrition in Paris. It covers the period from March 1944 to the towns liberation by the Allied Forces in August of the same year. Through the many people she meets and experiences she lives over these months, she will discover the bond and occasional acrimony which make the fabric of family life, the hardships of the Nazi occupation, the death of loved ones, the collaborators and the resistance, the doomed love between a French woman and a German officer, the fear of air raids and dread of shelters. Her account is infused with sadness and suspense but also with humor.