Adult

John Boyne's novel is the gripping story of two boys --- one the son of a commandant in Hitler's army and the other a Jew --- who come face-to-face at a barbed wire fence that separates, and eventually intertwines their lives.

In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the community of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium.  But when the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home.