Bluebird by Sharon Cameron

Title: Bluebird

Author: Sharon Cameron

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st June 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 464

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: In 1946, Eva leaves behind the rubble of Berlin for the streets of New York City, stepping from the fiery aftermath of one war into another, far colder one, where power is more important than principles, and lies are more plentiful than the truth. Eva holds the key to a deadly secret: Project Bluebird – a horrific experiment of the concentration camps, capable of tipping the balance of world power. Both the Americans and the Soviets want Bluebird, and it is something that neither should ever be allowed to possess.

But Eva hasn’t come to America for secrets or power. She hasn’t even come for a new life. She has come to America for one thing: justice. And the Nazi that has escaped its net.

Critically acclaimed author of The Light in Hidden Places Sharon Cameron weaves a taut and affecting thriller ripe with intrigue and romance in this alternately chilling and poignant portrait of the personal betrayals, terrifying injustices, and deadly secrets that seethe beneath the surface in the aftermath of World War II.

~*~

A year after the end of World War Two, Eva and her friend, Brigit arrive in New York as refugees. They’ve left a war of bombs, fire, destruction, and death behind only to enter a colder one with spies around every corner, and where power and lies override principles and truth. It is a dark world, where Eva feels she cannot trust anybody – a child of the Nazi regime, taught to hate and judge people based on race and religion, a child of the League of German Girls. And yet, in the year since the end of the war, Eva has seen how people can turn easily on each other, and what people are willing to destroy in the face of losing everything they have been told is true. Here in New York, Eva is on a mission, to find someone called Anna, and to get justice for twenty-seven names she keeps repeating to herself. As Anna and Brigit are taken in by a Quaker house, and Eva learns to trust, and learns that people the Nazis taught her were ‘lesser’ are the people she can trust, or learn to trust to an extent, there is a threat bubbling. Eva is approached by a man who hands her a card with a Bluebird. He wants her help to find Bluebird, and someone called Anna, and hopes she will lead them to another person connected with Project Bluebird – and the Americans and the Soviets want to unlock the secret of Bluebird that Eva carries with her. But can she fight through the injustices has faced, continues to face, and the secrets that are starting to surface as she starts a new life?

Project Bluebird was an unethical mind control programme run by the CIA in the aftermath of World War Two during the Cold War that was designed to look at the techniques the enemy might use. To work this out, they tested them on people they selected: potential agents, defectors, refugees, and prisoners of war – they wanted to prevent these subjects revealing CIA information, and the means of doing this were less than desirable. In Sharon Cameron’s novel, there is a hint of these through Eva and Brigit, and the first half of the book goes between 1946 and the end of the war in 1945, as we track Eva and Brigit’s journey to America. In the second half, we start to learn more about the past of a young girl through flashbacks. Throughout the novel there is the question of who Anna Ptaszynska is and where she is. The people who want her do not have Anna’s best interests at heart. And it seems they do not have Eva’s best interests at heart, because they’re resorting to blackmail. Unlike Happy Angel and Jacob Katz, a black woman, and a Jew – two people the Nazis would never have allowed Eva to associate with, and everyone at Powell House. They want to help Eva and understand that there are some things she doesn’t want to or cannot talk about. This aspect of the novel contrasted sharply with the rest that looked at the feelings of mistrust Eva had, and the trauma that had led to these feelings, illustrating the different effects of war or harsh regimes and how people responded.

Bluebird also examined how people can be brainwashed into an ideology or way of thinking through propaganda and conditioning, that the truth was purposely hidden from many, and known by the few who faced the Nuremburg trials in the wake of the war. The stark contrast between Eva and what was hidden from her – the reasons become clearer as the book goes on – and what her family knew, in particular her parents and the German boys around her illustrates the power dynamics and imbalances throughout society. In this instance, Eva was not privy to exactly what was going on – her character was fed lies and told what to believe – beliefs that slowly unravelled as the war ended and she spent time with Jacob and people at Powell House. Bluebird examines the Nazi regime, the Soviet regime, and the role that spies played in the days after the war differently than many books I have read. The Nazis are still bad, the Soviets are not the good guys either. And in centring the female experience of Nazi Germany, World War Two and Project Bluebird, Sharon Cameron has shown what happens when people are taken advantage of because someone thinks they are lesser.

Justice is an underlying theme of the novel – and one that Eva will go great lengths to achieve as the novel goes on. Whilst this is a young adult novel, it is quite a dark young adult spy thriller, and deals with some very sensitive content relating to abuse and war, so sensitive readers may not want to take this on. The trauma is threaded throughout, and the starkness of the way Eva and Brigit’s trauma from what they endured is represented compared to the relative safety of those they meet in New York, who did not see the war as they did, shows the range of wartime experiences, allowing for various discussions to be had – when it was time. Overall, I think it is a book targeted to the older end of Young Adult readers, or mature YA readers. It still gives another avenue of history to explore through fiction, and teaches us about something that might not be common knowledge to a lot of people. This is a very deep and thought-provoking book that might make readers question what they know – and the power of a person’s mind. An intriguing book for older readers.