The Silent Unseen: A Novel of World War II

About the Author
Amanda McCrina was homeschooled through high school and graduated from the University of West Georgia with a BA in history and political science. For three years, she taught high school English and government at an international school in Madrid, Spain, and is now a bookseller in Franklin, Tennessee. She is the author of Traitor and The Silent Unseen.
A mesmerizing historical novel of suspense and intrigue about a teenage girl who risks everything to save her missing brother.
Poland, July 1944. Sixteen-year-old Maria is making her way home after years of forced labor in Nazi Germany, only to find her village destroyed and her parents killed in a war between the Polish Resistance and Ukrainian nationalists. To Maria’s shock, the local Resistance unit is commanded by her older brother, Tomek―who she thought was dead. He is now a “Silent Unseen,” a special-operations agent with an audacious plan to resist a new and even more dangerous enemy sweeping in from the East.
When Tomek disappears, Maria is determined to find him, but the only person who might be able to help is a young Ukrainian prisoner and the last person Maria trusts―even as she feels a growing connection to him that she can’t resist.
Tightly woven, relentlessly intense, The Silent Unseen depicts an explosive entanglement of loyalty, lies, and love during wartime, from Amanda McCrina, the acclaimed author of Traitor, a debut hailed by Elizabeth Wein as “Alive with detail and vivid with insight . . . a piercing and bittersweet story.”
From School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up—It is 1944, and WWII rages on. Maria Kami ska, 16, has spent the last two-and-a-half years as an Ostarbeiter (slave worker) at a German factory. Maria, of Polish descent, was ordered away in 1942. She escapes the factory and is desperate to get to her home in Bród, Poland to see if her parents have survived the war. Worlds collide when she saves a Ukrainian boy's life in her family's old barn. The NKVD (Soviet police) think he is UPA (Ukrainian nationalists) and are torturing him for information. Although the Polish and Ukrainians have been at war, Maria decides to help Kostya. As they journey, the Polish Resistance picks them up and Kostya becomes a prisoner. One of the Polish soldiers turns out to be Tomek, Maria's brother who her family had thought dead since 1939. Tomek is a "Silent Unseen," Polish by definition—a special-ops agent trained in England on direct orders from the war ministry in London. McCrina soars in her writing as she depicts this complicated piece of forgotten history. Well researched, accurate, and smartly written, this is a page-turner, weaving together the horrors of war and its psychological consequences beautifully. VERDICT With a touch of romance thrown in, this suspenseful thriller is an excellent addition to YA historical fiction collections; a must-buy.—Gretchen Schulz