"Twelve-year-old Dory Byrne lives with her brothers on New York City's Lower East Side, waiting impatiently through the darkest hours of World War II for her pop to come home from fighting Hitler. Legally speaking, Dory's brother, Fish, isn't old enough to be in charge of Dory and her younger brother, Pike, but the neighborhood knows the score and, like Pop always says, 'the neighborhood will give you what you need.'
There's the lady from the bakery, who saves them leftover crullers. The kind landlord who checks in on them. And every Thursday night, the Byrnes enjoy a free bowl of seafood stew at Mr. Caputo's restaurant. Which is where Dory learns about the hand-pulled elevator that is the only way to get to Caputo's upper floors. The elevator that's so creaky and ancient, nobody's been in it for decades.
Until now.
The Byrnes' landlord dies unexpectedly and the new one is anything but kind. When he catches on about Pop being gone, he turns the Byrnes in, hoping they'll be shipped off to an orphanage. Dory and her brothers need a hideout, and suddenly the elevator and the abandoned hotel it leads to provide just the solution they need."
"For fans of The War That Saved My Life and other World War II fiction, A Place to Hang the Moon is the tale of three orphaned siblings who are evacuated from London to live in the countryside with the secret hope of finding a permanent family.
It is 1940 and William, twelve, Edmund, eleven, and Anna, nine, aren't terribly upset by the death of the not-so-grandmotherly grandmother who has taken care of them since their parents died. But the children do need a guardian, and in the dark days of World War II London, those are in short supply, especially if they hope to stay together. Could the mass wartime evacuation of children from London to the countryside be the answer?
It's a preposterous plan, but off they go—keeping their predicament a secret, and hoping to be placed in a temporary home that ends up lasting forever. Moving from one billet to another, the children suffer the cruel trickery of foster brothers, the cold realities of outdoor toilets, and the hollowness of empty stomachs. They find comfort in the village lending library, whose kind librarian, Nora Müller, seems an excellent choice of billet, except that her German husband's whereabouts are currently unknown, and some of the villagers consider her unsuitable."
