Bluebird by Sharon Cameron

Bluebird is a historical fiction novel based on a secret program code named Project Bluebird. The author has imagined a story that might have happened at the end of World War II as the Soviets and Americans raced to obtain secrets from the collapsed Nazi regime in Germany. In the novel there are two alternating narratives, that of Inge von Emmerich which begins in February, 1945 and of Eva Gerst which begins in August 1946. 

It is February, 1945. After taking her father's car for a joyride with her friend Annemarie Toberentz, sixteen-year-old Inge von Emmerich sneaks the car back home. Kurt, her family's chauffeur offers to clean the mud off it in exchange for two honey cakes. While Herr Gundersen gives seven-year-old Adolf and ten-year-old Erich their violin lessons, Inge enters her father's study. On his desk she sees a file with her name on it, something that puzzles her. When Mama finds her in the study listening to Papa's radio, she slaps her and sends her to her room.

Inge's papa works in a camp "rehabilitating the enemies of Germany. Teaching them to obey. To be better. To be useful and productive." The next day, Inge's mama pulls her from her League of German Girls meeting, and they drive quickly home. At home, her mama tells Inge, Erich and Adolf to each pack a bag with three changes of clothes and a coat. Inge's mother tells them nothing about what is happening or where they are going. Kurt drives them and Helga is also brought along. They don't go to Berlin  near papa's camp, as Inge expected, but instead drive to their summer lodge. And when they arrive, the car is unloaded of boxes and baskets of food, much more than three days worth.

At the summer house everyone is sent to their rooms. In her Mama's room next door, Inge hears the radio but cannot make out what is being broadcast. Kurt leaves during the night but leaves a car key and money for Inge under the door. After a week at the lodge, Inge questions her mama as to whether papa is coming. Her mama tells her that he is busy winning the war, creating a new world for them. Her abusive manner towards Inge leads her to leave the lodge and run to the Kleimann's house next door. Inge rips off some of the boards and spends time playing the piano until the house is hit by a bomb. Terrified she races home to find her mother has murdered Helga, Erich and Adolf and shot herself in the head. On the radio, Inge hears that Hitler is dead and the enemy is in Berlin.

Inge manages to start the car and drives to their home in Berlin, hoping to find her papa. As she enters the road near the house, she passes a truck of Soviet soldiers and doesn't stop for her friend, Annemarie who is in the field running towards her. Their home is in ruins and her papa is not there. While Inge searches for the file with her name in her papa's study, she hears soldiers voices downstairs. She hears Annemarie's voice and when she begins screaming, a terrified Inge hides underneath the large desk in the study. After the soldiers leave, Inge rescues the unconscious Annemarie and drives to her papa's camp. The car breaks down just a kilometer away, so leaves Annemarie in the car unconscious and walks to the camp. There Inge sees the most horrific sight imaginable: piles of human bodies.

At first Inge believes this is the work of the Soviet Communists. She meets a man in faded striped clothing from the camp, whom she believes is a prisoner of the Communists. She asks him about her father but he thinks her father is one of the prisoners. As the former prisoner starts to take Inge to the man in charge, she notices that the soldiers are Russian. She begins to realize that the people in the camp were prisoners of the Nazis. When she asks about a man named von Emmerich, the former prisoner tells her about the doctor and how "He wanted to know what he could make you say make you do. How much you could endure. He made sure you were crazy, before you died." He tells her the prisoners were "lab rats", "unworthy of life" and that everyone running the camp has been arrested....except the doctor. Inge flees the camp, realizing that everything she's been told is a lie.

August, 1946, sees Eva Gerst and her companion, Brigit Heidelmann watching as their ship pulls into New York harbour. Brigit doesn't speak and is easily upset so Eva leads her back to their cabin to get their suitcases. Both girls have papers sewn into the lining of their skirts. Miss Schaffer, in charge of their group leads the thirty-eight refugees off the ship and into customs. 

Eventually Eva and Brigit are met by Elizabeth Whittlesby, who goes by the name of Bets. She is from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and will help to resettle Eva and Brigit. She takes them to her car where they find a young man named Jacob (Jake) Katz in the back seat. Eva notices that he has "the most extraordinary beautiful hazel-green eyes". Brigit is wary of Jake, but when he begins to play the harmonica, she is distracted and smiles. Eva has noticed they are being watched at the airport and then followed by a man with shiny shoes in a car.

They arrive at Powell House and Eva and Brigit are assigned to the blue room. But when Eva goes to find a phone, she runs into the man with the shiny shoes who's been following them. He warns Eva not to talk about her father to anyone and to hold her end of the bargain, to bring the US government her father. He hands her his card with the name of Mr. Cruickshanks on it. Eva knows this is not his real name. And she also knows her father won't be using his real name either. The United States government wants not only her father but also Anna Ptaszynska who is a killer.

The key to finding her father might just be Dr. Schneider, a doctor at Columbia hospital who had been corresponding with her father over research. Eva believes she must find her father before Cruickshanks and the U.S. government do, or there will be no justice. And justice for herself and for twenty-seven people, whose names she has memorized is what matters most.

Discussion

Bluebird is an intriguing historical fiction novel based on Project Bluebird, a top secret program run by the CIA from 1949 to 1950. Not much is known about Project Bluebird except that it was a mind control program devised to determine if special techniques such as hypnosis and certain drugs could be used in interrogation and conditioning. It also sought to understand if it could be used to obtain accurate information from willing and unwilling subjects, and if it were possible to control the physical and mental actions of willing and unwilling subjects. There were many other goals as well, such as how long post-hypnotic suggestion could be retained, can a person's personality be altered and if so, how long will it hold. Cameron offers more detail in her detailed Author's Note at the back of the novel.

Cameron draws her readers in immediately with the alternating narratives of Inge von Emmerich, daughter of a German doctor who works at a camp, set in the final days of World War II as the Soviet army moves into eastern Germany, and that of Eva Gerst set eighteen months later in August, 1946 as she and a fellow German, Brigit Heidelmann are arriving to start a new life in America. Eventually, these two narratives converge, with readers likely coming to understand the connection between Inge and Eva beforehand.

However, the guessing doesn't stop there: readers begin to wonder who Eva and Brigit really are.  Eva/Inge is on a mission to find her papa, known as "the doctor" at  Sachsenhausen Concentration camp located in Oranienburg, north of Berlin. In the novel when Eva discovers the truth of her papa's work, she is horrified and determined to mete out "justice". As it happens,  the Allies discover her identity as the missing doctor's daughter, and she is offered passage to North America to help locate him. Eva's determined to find him not for the Allies, but so that she can kill him. 

 

As the search goes on for her father, Eva begins to learn more about her father's research and why the U.S. and even the Soviets want him. Cruikshanks sums it up for Eva: "Imagine, Fraulein, if the mind was a moldable object. If memories could be plucked out...and replaced. Imagine if we could say a word, and have a captured soldier walk back across the lines and disable his own country's weapons. If an agent never blew their cover, because they were unaware that they were an agent at all? Imagine if a man like Hitler could have been removed years ago with one of his own officials...."

 

But Eva sees the dangers in such a program. "You could make them 'better', Eva thinks. And who gets to decide who is better and who isn't?" Cruikshanks also believes that Anna Ptaszynska was her father's first and most successful experiment. Who Anna is becomes a source of conflict and personal terror for Eva. At first she believes that Brigit/Annemarie is Anna but then she begins to suspect she might be based on her shadowy memories of events that occurred when she was very young. The files she has stolen from her father's study, seem to confirm this. All of this feeds on the profound conflict Eva is experiencing over her own identity.

 

Eventually, Eva learns the truth from her father about Anna. He tells her that Cruikshanks would love to have an Anna but that he doesn't need her. "He only thinks he does. The process of splitting the personality, of placing a hypnotic suggestion, bending a mind to a certain will, it's all so....messy. Overcomplicated, inefficient, and the outcomes are impossible to predict. When all you really need to make another person do what you wish is the application of the right leverage...."

Eva discovers that her papa has manipulated people to save himself, but  this backfires when he is taken by the Soviets and not the Americans as he had hoped. Eventually, through the efforts of Jake,  Eva learns her true identity and discovers that maybe this justice was for herself and her lost family. 

 

As the story progresses, Eva changes from an uninformed teenager living in a Nazi regime to understanding just what that regime was doing to people it deemed were "less". Her life immediately after the war is consumed by revenge and obtaining what she believes is justice. But in America, events play out in a way that sees justice determined differently than what Eva intended. She also begins to fall in love with Jake. When he leaves for a time, Eva feels fear for the future. In the end, Jake's return suggests a happier, better future. Their love offers readers hope, that in spite of the most horrible of events, there can be a life worth living.

Bluebird is another excellent novel by Sharon Cameron: there's a storyline filled with twists, shady characters, mystery and a touch of romance. There have been so many novels written about World War II, but Cameron has found a new aspect to write about which should peak the interest of those readers looking for something a bit different.

 

For information on Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp: https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/history/1936-1945-sachsenhausen-concentration-camp/

Book Details:

Bluebird by Sharon Cameron
New York: Scholastic Press    2021
438 pp.

Fractured by Teri Terry

Fractured is the second book in the Slated series by Canadian-born author, Teri Terry.

Kyla is confused by bits of memories that begin surfacing after a violent attack by a man named Wayne Best in the woods near her home. Slateds are not supposed to be violent but Kyla is not an ordinary Slated. For one thing her Levo does not work and she doesn't behave like a typical Slated. Kyla begins to have memories of someone named Rain and she starts to realize that she is someone else other than Kyla.

She also begins having memories of a man named Nico. Eventually Kyla remembers and recognizes that her biology teacher, Mr. Hatten, is the enigmatic Nico. Nico finally confronts Kyla and asks her if she remembers who she is. Nico explains to Kyla what happened to her, how he trained her as part of the radical group, Free UK, so that she would survive Slating and recover her memories.

Kyla was born Lucy who was left handed. She joined Free UK when she was thirteen and her left-handedness was changed by Nico (by smashing a brick onto her hand) so that she would be right handed. When she joined Free UK Lucy took the name Rain. Rain taken by the Lorders and was Slated but as a right-handed person. "How Slating is done depends on handedness. Memory access is hemisphere dominated and linked to handedness." So when Rain was Slated, the process did not work because it was done as if she was right-handed when she was really left-handed. This protected her from the procedure.She then returned as a Slated girl named Kyla. Rains memories are intact, just waiting to return which they are now doing gradually.

Kyla continues to meet Nico on and off, but she has mixed feelings about him. She feels alternately repelled and attracted to him but is not certain why. He tells her she is his special one and explains to her, her involvement in the Free UK group. Yet Kyla can't help but feel that Nico is hiding something from Kyla.

Kyla also meets a new guy named Cameron who lives across the street with his aunt and uncle. Cam seems determined to forge a friendship with Kyla, one she's not too interested in developing. At the same time, Tori, Ben's ex-girlfriend reappears, with her Levo removed. Everyone thought that Tori had been terminated but we learn that Tori was spared this fate by a Lorder who "rescued" her and kept her in his home where she was forced to do certain things. Tori murdered this man and escaped and is taken by Kyla to Nico who hides her at a Free UK safehouse.

Nico asks Kyla to learn the layout of the New London Hospital where she continues to go weekly to meet with Dr. Lysander. He also introduces her to an old acquaintance, Katran, who Kyla (as Rain) trained with in Free UK. Because Kyla is experiencing so many difficulties sorting out her identities, Katran warns her to leave Free UK, that Nico has been using her and has had something done to her by a special doctor, Dr. Craig, who has caused her to have two identities. Katran warns her to leave the Free UK group because he suspects Nico's plans for her will place her in danger.

Kyla's situation becomes even more complicated when she is grabbed by the Lorders and taken to see Agent Coulson who tells her they have been monitoring her unusual activities. He knows she is working with AGT (what the Lorders call Free UK) and tells her that if she wants to see Ben again, she will act as a double agent and supply them with intelligence on the terrorist group's activities. Kyla decides not to tell Nico about her meeting with Coulson and to give Coulson only the information he needs while warning Ben.

However, things take a desperate turn when Kyla discovers that Nico and Free UK are planning kidnappings and assassinations, specifically targeting the Armstrong Memorial Day event which her family will attend. This event is in remembrance of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of Kyla's current mother's father who was Prime Minister at that time. Nico tells Kyla that she must attend the function because she is the only Free UK agent who can infiltrate such a function. He does not tell her what the purpose of her presence will be.

A series of events now happen to move things forward. Nico makes contact with Kyla's mother and tells her that he will provide her with information on her lost son Robert, who was removed in a school bombing years ago, if she makes a statement against the Lorders and Slating at the Armstrong Memorial Day. In order to impress Nico that she can live up to his expectations for her, Kyla helps Nico and Katran capture Dr. Lysander. She also makes the discovery that Ben is alive and is being trained as a Lorder agent at a special facility. When she sneaks onto the facility to meet him she learns that he does not remember her.

When Kyla is told what her mission will be during the Armstrong Memorial Day she struggles to accept what Nico wants of her. Instead, she begins to think on her own and chooses a different path which has repercussions for all involved including Kyla and her family. These events also result in Kyla remembering more of her past, especially when she was Lucy and before she became Rain.

The beginning of this novel was at times confusing; it took several chapters to get into the story and to begin to understand what was happening with Kyla. Terry complicates her novel by having Kyla have three different identities - Lucy, Rain and Kyla. To some characters she is Rain, to others she is Kyla.

In Fractured, Kyla struggles to uncover the mystery of her three identities and her past. We learn that she has been taken from her family and essentially experimented with so that the Slating process will not fully work and so that she can be used by a terrorist organization. The result is a young girl who has a fractured identity and a fragmented memory which she begins to regain as events trigger their recall. Kyla begins to piece everything together with information provided by Nico and Katran, as well as memories that surface from dreams and situations she experiences. Kyla is very conflicted, wanting to please Nico, but also recognizing that if she does what he wants innocent people who have been trying to help her will be harmed. Kyla has a serious moral dilemma to resolve but she proves she's up to the task, despite having little context to make her decisions. She hardly knows Nico, or Dr. Lysander or her mother or father and she has to decide whom to trust.

Terry crafts Nico as a manipulative, cunning man who uses people to achieve his goals of destabilizing the Lorders and ending Slating. Although his intent is a noble one, his means are questionable at best and there is no doubt that he has done considerable harm to Kyla. The way he treats her is creepy and disturbing and Terry effectively relays this to her readers.

There are plenty of other unknowns in the story besides Kyla's past. Who has betrayed Kyla to Agent Coulson? Who is Cam and why is he so intent upon seeing Kyla? What has happened to Ben and what exactly is he involved in now?

Readers will find Fractured takes some time to get going, but Terry does explain what has happened to Kyla fairly early on in the novel. This allows the story to move forward while maintaining Kyla's struggle to understand her past.

The third novel is due out next year and should provide a fitting conclusion to this interesting, unique dystopia.

Book Details:
Fractured by Teri Terry
New York: Nancy Paulsen Books 2013
330 pp.

Slated by Teri Terry

Terri Terry's debut novel, Slated, is set in 2054, in London which is ruled by the Central Coalition. The Coalition government came into power after  a devastating economic collapse in the 2020's and demonstrations and terrorist acts committed by students. The Coalition is the product of  the merging of two sides; the Law and Order movement which became the Lorders and the Freedom UK which wanted to rehabilitate young criminals. When the ability to erase memories was discovered, the two groups merged, resulting in a country ruled by the Lorders.

Sixteen year old Kyla has been "Slated" - that is, her memory wiped clean. Like every Slated person, Kyla is forced to wear a Levo device on her wrist. The Levo interacts with a chip implanted in the Slated teen's brain, detecting their mood. When mood levels are either extremely low or high, the wearer receives a zap that causes them to black out or have seizures. Any attempts to remove the Levo result in death. Slated teens can only have the Levo removed when they turn twenty-one.

After being Slated, teens are kept in hospital for six months where they are re-educated before being released to live with a brand new family. Kyla's new mom is Sandra Armstrong-Davis, whose father William Adam M. Armstrong eliminated the gangs threatening British society in the 2020's. Sandra's parents were killed in an act of terrorism. Kyla's new dad, David Davis, seems very kindly at first but Kyla soon grows suspicious of him. Her new older sister is nineteen year old Amy, who has a boyfriend, Jazz.

Kyla attends Lord William's School with her sister Amy who is behind a grade after being Slated. Kyla is tested and is put at grade level, something that is also very unusual. During this time Kyla is being watched over by several people called "Watchers" including Mrs. Ali who follows Kyla around at school.

Kyla has no idea why she was Slated. Although she's been told that all her memories and her personality have been wiped clean, Kyla knows that she is different. She's has been experiencing nightmares, which kept her hospitalized an extra three months, post-Slating. These nightmares seem to contain information from her life prior to Slating, although Kyla can't be certain. Kyla also discovers that she can draw using her left hand, and that she remembers how to drive. She also notices that when she gets angry, her Levo does not seem to work. Kyla wants to know why she was Slated and she wants to know who her family was before. Did they not want her? Do they know what has happened to her. The story that Slated tells is of Kyla's journey of self-discovery and truth.

Shortly after arriving home, Kyla meets Ben Nix at a group therapy meeting for Slateds. Ben also attends the same high school with Kyla, where he is in some of her classes. Ben encourages her to come running with him and Kyla discovers that running counters the affect of the Levo, allowing both of them to be more like their real selves. Kyla finds herself attracted to tall, handsome Ben but thinks that maybe another Slated girl, Tori is his girlfriend. Kyla like all Slateds has been told to stay away from boys until she is twenty-one.

When Tori goes missing, Ben learns, to Kyla's horror, that she was "returned" like an old pair of shoes. Soon Ben and Kyla discover that not only are Slated teens disappearing, but also Naturals too. Then Kyla witnesses Phoebe, a Natural who has been bullying Kyla,  being removed from school by the Lorders. Shortly after this, her beloved art teacher, Mr. Gianelli is also taken away by Lorders in front of the entire school.

Kyla is taken by Jazz to meet Mac, a twenty-something who has access to a computer. He tells Kyla about the many websites which parents and family are using in an attempt to locate missing children. From Mac's search, Kyla discovers the truth about her identity, but few clues to her past. Who was she? Why was she Slated?

Later Kyla takes Ben to meet Mac who introduces them to Aiden. Aiden works for MIA = Missing In Action, trying to locate people who were taken illegally by the government. They want to identify these missing people so they can expose the government and stop it. Some missing people are taken to be Slated. Some are taken by AGT (Anti-Government Terrorists) to try to disable or remove their Levos. This latter idea becomes very attractive to Ben. After an incident in which his Levo prevents him from protecting Kayla, he becomes obsessed with removing it - an act that could result in his death.

As more of her past reveals itself to Kyla and as she is confronted by someone from her past, Kyla must make the decision to either stay in the present and live her life as it is, or confront who she was in the past and perhaps return to that life. Kyla doesn't want to go back to her past but will she have a choice?

Slated is a good novel with a well developed storyline that holds the reader's interest to the very end. Kyla and Ben live in what is essentially a totalitarian society, where any resistance to authority is now useless. What was initially a technique developed to rehabilitate criminals, is now one used to control anyone who resists the authority of the state. When Mr. Gianelli protests, in a very mild way, the disappearance of Phoebe by drawing her portrait in art class, he finds himself carted off by the Lorders. Kyla finds herself watched constantly and repeatedly warned by Mrs. Ali that she is in danger of being "returned" when she asks questions. How better to put down opposition than by wiping your opponent's memory clean. How easy to prevent any sort of rebellion against what is happening by forcing these "rehabilitated" young people to wear a device that shocks them should they experience depression or anger? Terry has created a future world that is entirely believable and possible - a police state based on events which are all too common today - economic collapse and widespread anger.

As Kyla learns more about her new world, she realizes that she will need to learn how to live according to the Lorders rules. Even with her doctor, Dr. Lysander, who invented Slating, Kayla knows Lysander will recognize when she is lying so she must be careful to tell only part of the truth and never reveal all of it. It a psychological game of cat and mouse even though Lysander seems to suggest to Kyla that she is on her side.

Terry does a great job of portraying how Kyla's relationship with her new mother blossoms and how the initial impression of her new parents and of  Dr. Lysander gradually change thoughout the novel. At first her dad seems kind and warm, while her mother earns the nickname "dragon lady". However, it is her mother who saves her life when things go terribly wrong with Ben  while her father threatens her if she doesn't conform.

There's a touch of romance between Ben and Kyla that is sweet and filled with many tender moments. Kyla is still haunted by what she thinks is Ben's love for Tori. For the most part Ben is a rather boring character until the very end of the novel,  when he chooses a drastic course of action. His plainness is explained by the Levo toning him down so that we don't see the real Ben until he starts taking medication that counters the effect of the Levo.

The cliff-hanger at the end means we have to wait until the next book, Fractured, is published in  September, 2013!

Book Details:
Slated by Teri Terry
New York: Nancy Paulsen Books       2012
346 pp.