Westfallen

From #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author Ann Brashares and her brother Ben Brashares comes an action-packed middle grade alternate history thriller that asks what it would be like to wake up in present-day America if Germany had won World War II.

Henry, Frances, and Lukas are neighbors, and they used to be best friends. But in middle school, things can change fast—Frances has become an emo art-girl, Lukas has gone full sports bro, and Henry has gone sort of nowhere. But when a dead gerbil brings them together again, the three ex-friends make an impossible discovery: a radio buried in Henry’s backyard that allows them to talk to another group of kids in the same town…on the same street…in the same backyard…seventy-nine years in the past.

The kids in 1944 want to know all about the future: are there jetpacks? Laser guns? Teleportation? Most of all, they want to know about the outcome of the war their dads and brothers are fighting in. Henry and his friends are cautious—they’ve all seen movies about what happens when you disrupt the fabric of time—but figure there’s no harm in telling them a little bit, just enough so they can stop worrying so much. And, at first, everything seems fine. Nothing’s changed—well, nothing so big they can’t contain it, anyway.

Until Henry, Frances, and Lukas wake up on May 6, 2024, to an America ruled by Nazis. They changed history. And now it’s up to them to change it back.

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 writer, she was a student of philosophy, a receptionist, an editor, a ghostwriter, and, briefly, the copresident of a small media company. 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 shoes (and the debilitating lumps in his socks) every morning before school until he learned to tie his own shoes…around eighth grade. 

Ben Brashares lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife and three children. He’s the author of 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, Men’s Journal, and Entertainment Weekly. 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…to put on his sister’s head while she slept. As an adult, Ben gets no help whatsoever tying his shoes. But he still has weird pets. And he still gets lumps in his socks.