For more than a thousand miles now, that hat has been pinned to my mother’s head. I can’t tell whether she’s sleeping or train-sick, a kind of sick I didn’t know existed until we got on the train and people started making retching sounds into the paper bags provided by the guards patrolling the aisles. Now my mother sits across from us, wedged beside our stack of suitcases, keeping her back straight so her hat doesn’t get crushed against the seat of the Pullman car. “I know that,” I said meaningfully, and then I didn’t say anything else because I didn’t want to talk about who the real enemy was. “Your little sister is not your enemy,” Mama told me the last time Toshiko and I argued, which was the first time I learned about Texas. But I stay serene because it’s part of our unspoken pact, my sister and me, that we’re polite because we’re too afraid to be anything else. She pokes my side to get my attention, which she knows I hate. “I WISH WE WERE ALL HOME NOW,” TOSHIKO WHISPERS, AS IF I’LL have a different response than I had the last time she said the same thing. *Don't miss Monica Hesse's New York Times bestselling historical mysteries, Girl in the Blue Coat and They Went Left* Read Excerpt But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone–even each other? With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their growing, secret friendship. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother's health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her.

The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a 'family internment camp' for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado–until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific.

'A must-read for fans of historical fiction.' –Ruta Sepetys, #1 New York Times bestselling author An 'important' ( New York Times Book Review), 'extraordinary' ( Booklist, starred review) novel of conviction, friendship, and betrayal, from Monica Hesse, the bestselling and award-winning author of Girl in the Blue Coat

The war outside by monica hesse