Not about the war, but about the children who lived through it.
Inspired by real events and survivor memories.
WWII. Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Two kids. One war.
In the autumn of 1944, twelve-year-old Johanna lives in Arnhem, where Operation Market Garden brings the war crashing into her city. In nearby Apeldoorn, eleven-year-old Rein experiences the occupation from a different childhood vantage point. As the Netherlands moves into the devastating Hunger Winter, their separate stories reveal what war looks like not from the battlefield, but through the eyes of the children forced to live through it.
Inspired by the real childhood experiences of the author’s former in-laws during the Nazi occupation, Beneath the Canopy is a story of ordinary children living through extraordinary circumstances—of hunger and fear, courage and kindness, and the determination to hold on to hope when history has other plans.
Accessible to younger readers while carrying emotional weight for adults, Beneath the Canopy asks not how battles are won, but what it takes for ordinary people—especially children—to survive them.
