From #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author Ann Brashares and her brother Ben Brashares comes the “resonant and powerful” ( School Library Journal , starred review) second book in the action-packed middle grade alternate history thriller trilogy that asks what present-day America would be like if Germany had won World War II. Former best friends Henry, Frances, and Lukas thought they’d managed to restore history to its original path after their antics with a time-bending radio went awry. But they’re still trapped in Westfallen, the version of present-day America where the Axis won WWII, living an alternate—and much darker—version of their lives. Henry has to work at the Home for Incurables, Lukas is on hard labor all day, and only Frances, whose parents are members of the Nazi elite, gets to go to school and move freely. And since they and their friends in 1944 destroyed the radio, they have to find cruder and ever-more-desperate ways to communicate across time. Frances uses her privilege in Westfallen to gather as much information as she can, while Henry tries to turn Lukas into a local baseball hero to save him from being sent away to a work camp. But the deeper the three friends and their 1944 counterparts dig into how Westfallen came to be, the more they begin to attract unwanted attention from people with a vested interest in making sure this version of history becomes permanent…at any cost. ★ "Resonant and powerful." -- School Library Journal, starred review Ann Brashares is a writer and mother of four living in New York City. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series as well as several other novels. Before becoming a novelist, she was a student of philosophy, a receptionist, an editor, a ghostwriter, and briefly, the copresident of a small media company. Before that, she grew up in Washington, DC, with her three brothers and a stunning number of weird pets. She helped her youngest brother, Ben, with his socks and shoes every morning before school until he learned to tie his own shoes himself, around ninth grade. Ben Brashares lives with his wife and three kids in Montclair, New Jersey. He is the author of two children’s books, Being Edie Is Hard Today and The Great Whipplethorp Bug Collection . He holds an MFA in creative writing and has worked at and written for several magazines, including Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal . He spent much of his youth wading through heaps of clothes in his big sister’s room looking for the family’s escape-artist tarantula, Fredricka. He may or may not have put Frederika on his sister’s head while she slept. Chapter One CHAPTER ONE If at first you don’t succeed, cry cry again. Lawrence / 1944 May 15, 1944 Dear Dad, I hope training keeps going well. I know you must be more impatient than ever to ship out. The sooner you can get to France and help free the world from the Nazis, the sooner you can come back home. I think about that more and more, because something important and strange happened here at home. We took Robbie’s old radio and set it up in the back shed. We were as surprised as anyone when we pulled a signal from some kids we didn’t know. We didn’t just receive a signal, but also transmitted one. I know we’re not supposed to do that. We didn’t intend to. It started strange and it just got stranger. The kids we talked to are not from around here. Well, that’s wrong, they are from exactly around here but not from now. They are from the future—almost eighty years in the future. I know it will be hard to believe that and I can’t think of any good way to explain how it’s true, so I’ll just keep writing. The kids told us some things about the war. We didn’t imagine it could make any difference, but it has. We think Artie’s dad is still sympathetic to Germany, and he may have overheard. He told someone who set a chain of events in motion that will change the way the war came out. Now we have to undo the harm we’ve done. That’s all there is to it. We have to undo it before you get to France, because I don’t want to think about what could happen if we don’t. I put down my pencil. I crumpled up the first letter, ripped it into pieces, and threw it in the garbage. May 15, 1944 Dear Dad, We really miss you, but we’re doing just fine here. I hope you got the cookies Mama sent. I’m busy with school and the garden and the scrap metal drive and looking out for Mama and Janie. Your loving son, Lawrence I took the second letter out of my notebook. I folded it into an envelope. I sealed it, addressed it to my dad at Fort Kilmer, and stuck on a three-cent railroad stamp. It was a short and stupid letter. There was so much I wanted to say that I couldn’t say, so much to write that I couldn’t send. But I had to send something. Frances / 2023 Monday morning our driver Jurgen drove me to school, and it was agony. Okay. I know how tha