The Pied Piper

Young Adult Novel, set in Europe in 1940. 70-year-old Englishman goes fishing in the French mountains, near the Swiss border. To amuse two children he's met, he makes a whistle from a twig of hazel bush [hence, the book's title]. When Germany invades France, he decides to go back to England, and is asked to take the children with him. Along the way, he finds another child, and another, and another, leading his young outcasts through shell-fire and sacrifice, in a search of safe haven from a world at war. A poignant sub-plot shows why this man had left England in perilous times, and how he found in France a woman who healed this poignancy (and, in the process, her own personal sorrow). The story ends in a surprisingly gratifying way. The dangers of death and war remain in the reader's heart, along with the resounding echoes of courage, honesty, love. Mostly love. Book-reviewers called it "the best story of World War II" *[Cincinnati Enquirer]* ... "piles up dramatic force -- the work of a master storyteller" *[New York Times]* ... "gripping and tender" *[New York Herold Tribune]* ... "moving, heart-warming -- (Nevil Shute's) greatest novel" *[Book Buyer's Guide]* ... "He write (in this touching book) about human beings and ordinary human emotions in a way that makes the reading of each page an unalloyed pleasure" *[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]* ...... [comments by: Billy Jack]