Announcing Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard by Deborah Rey

Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard and Anne Frank’s Diary have many things in common: The Netherlands, World War Two, the Nazis, and the wish to survive. Yet, where Anne was forced to passively hide and depended on righteous people to survive, young Rachel Sarai was actively involved as a ‘baby-courier’ in the work of the Underground Resistance. Equally important, she was responsible for guarding the hiding place in her parents’ house, which sheltered many people in peril during the last years of war.

Jewish, but very blond and thus inconspicuous, Rachel Sarai was nearly five when she began to distribute messages, and – during nightly curfew hours – smuggle people across the moors to a safe address. She learned to lie, steal and murder, and face up to the Germans, especially the Gestapo. She was seven when the British and Canadians liberated the country.

"What strikes me, is the skill with which you've woven the story with the voices of young Rachel and the present ‘Rachel’. Young Rachel is an absolute star and what she has had to endure almost seems to make her a person and personality in her own right, far less the younger version of the author. I could see this as a film and also as an excellent stage play, and I would definitely like to see as many people as possible reading/seeing the story of a remarkable person (young and older). I don't think I've ever read anything so sensitively written in its honesty, ie. being true to the voice of the narrator."

Kim Schroeder