She has a secret. Keeping it will mean the difference between life and death.

1941, Poland. Though war rages around her and occupying German forces march steadily onward, 16-year-old Aleksandra has lived her life sheltered from danger.

Until one day, she goes to school – never to return.

Pushed roughly into a truck with other schoolgirls like her, a single ominous word tells her all she needs to know about her fate: Lebensborn.

Lebensborn, the infamous German “voluntary reproduction” program – rumored to involve the abduction of blond-haired, blue-eyed girls and forcing them to bear the children of Nazi soldiers.

But when their convoy is bombed en route to Berlin, Aleksandra and the girls see their chance to escape. In a foreign land, far from home, they know their survival depends on keeping their identities a secret.

Resourceful and determined not to be discovered, Aleksandra takes a job as a nurse in the German city of Dresden. Just as she starts to think she might live to see the end of the war, her carefully crafted secret begins to unravel. Aleksandra knows that if she ever wants to see her home and family again, she will have to risk it all – on her own.

Previously published as Before Berlin.