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Children and Fire

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 699 ratings · 200 reviews

The fourth novel in the Burgdorf Cycle Though more than fifteen years have passed since Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River captivated critics and readers alike, it retains its popularity, is on academic reading lists, and continues to be adopted by book groups.

Also set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegi’s Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transfo...more The fourth novel in the Burgdorf Cycle Though more than fifteen years have passed since Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River captivated critics and readers alike, it retains its popularity, is on academic reading lists, and continues to be adopted by book groups.

Also set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegi’s Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transform the lives of the townspeople. At the core of this remarkable novel is the question of how one teacher—gifted and joyful, passionate and inventive—can become seduced by propaganda during the early months of Hitler’s regime and encourage her ten-year-old students to join the “Hitler-Jugend” with its hikes and songs and bonfires. Membership, she believes, will be a step toward better schools, better apprenticeships.

How can a woman we admire choose a direction we don’t admire? So much has changed for the teacher, Thekla Jansen, and the people of Burgdorf in the year since the parliament building burned. Thekla’s lover, Emil Hesping, is sure the Nazis did it to frame the communists. But Thekla believes what she hears on the radio, that the communists set the fire, and she’s willing to relinquish some of her freedoms to keep her teaching position. She has always taken her moral courage for granted, but when each silent agreement chips away at that courage, she knows she must reclaim it.

Hegi funnels pivotal moments in history through the experiences of individual characters: Thekla’s mother, who works as a housekeeper for a Jewish family; her employers, Michel and Ilse Abramowitz; Thekla’s mentally ill father; Trudi Montag and her father, Leo Montag; Fräulein Siderova, midwife to the dying; and the students who adore their young teacher. As Ursula Hegi writes along that edge where sorrow and bliss meet, she shows us how one society—educated, cultural, compassionate—can slip into a reality that’s fabricated by propaganda and controlled by fear, how a surge of national unity can be manipulated into the dehumanization of a perceived enemy and the justification of torture and murder.

Gorgeously rendered and emotionally taut, Children and Fire confirms Ursula Hegi’s position as one of the most distinguished writers of her generation.(less)

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published May 24th 2011 by Scribner (first published 1994)

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Jan 26, 2012 Rae rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, historical-fiction

A slow-moving, but ultimately satisfying, read that moved me even though I knew what was coming. The book is set in the years before World War II, in Germany, when Hitler has come to power and the Reichstag has burned. Thekla Jansen, a teacher, thinks she can help her students (all boys) live ordinary (and somewhat innocent) lives despite the tense (but not quite yet terrifying) world that surrounds them.

Favorite lines:

But they don't budge. Their sudden scorn is so palpable that, any moment now,...more A slow-moving, but ultimately satisfying, read that moved me even though I knew what was coming. The book is set in the years before World War II, in Germany, when Hitler has come to power and the Reichstag has burned. Thekla Jansen, a teacher, thinks she can help her students (all boys) live ordinary (and somewhat innocent) lives despite the tense (but not quite yet terrifying) world that surrounds them.

Favorite lines:

But they don't budge. Their sudden scorn is so palpable that, any moment now, they may turn on her, no longer individual boys she can guide but a pack. Her palms are wet, and it comes to her how, with the government, too, she believed she could manage it, yet once unleashed, it was overtaking her, all of them. Across the river, people are no more than dots, unable to help even if they were to recognize the danger. And what Thekla knows instinctively is this: If you step back, you are lost. The urge of the pack will escalate. (190-191)

Other soldiers, too, returned early, broken from the battlefields and the blinding rush toward oblivion. They'd lie on their beds all day. Or you'd see them on chairs by their windows. War had decimated the threshold between them and the shadows. Yet, you couldn't tell they were injured. That's why they were worse off than soldiers whose injuries were evident--the loss of an arm, say, or of a leg--because you could acknowledge those soldiers' loss and heroism by carving a wooden limb, say, or a crutch; or by helping with chores they could no longer do. This brokenness was more crippling than blindness or scarred lungs from the nerve gas that had overtaken many as they ran from it. Escape was your first impulse when that green, stinking cloud fanned toward you, and you'd forget what you'd been taught in training, to stop and piss on your handkerchief or sleeve and press the wet fabric over your face to counteract the gas. The only injuries worse than the brokenness were the injuries of soldiers who were kept out of sight in faraway infirmaries because their wounds made them too grotesque to live among others. (212)

He surely had to know Heine's words "Dort, wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen--where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people." (234)

What seemed so benevolent at first--equality and community and employment for everyone--turned out to be lies that the Fuhrer slipped into schools and homes, seducing and warping, until the people believed they were choosing for themselves; and out of this, they fabricated tales that were more distorted then mismatched fairy-tale blocks, more bizarre than any toymaker would have invented. (270-271)(less)

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Jan 11, 2012 J.Elle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oh, Ursula Hegi, I so want to like your books, but, for some reason, I just can’t. You are firmly in the two star category for me: Stones from the River. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m lacking in some way? NAH. :) I think my real opinion is that everything is just too drawn out and too much time is spent on everything, as if the premise of the writing is, “why explain something in a paragraph when I can turn it into a whole chapter?” And people, therein lies one of the main reasons I read so much youn...more Oh, Ursula Hegi, I so want to like your books, but, for some reason, I just can’t. You are firmly in the two star category for me: Stones from the River. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m lacking in some way? NAH. :) I think my real opinion is that everything is just too drawn out and too much time is spent on everything, as if the premise of the writing is, “why explain something in a paragraph when I can turn it into a whole chapter?” And people, therein lies one of the main reasons I read so much young adult fiction. I am busy. I work full-time. I have a husband. I have a toddler. I cook most of our meals. I try to bake the majority of our bread. I have a cat that never stops meowing. I have things to do and I cannot waste, yes, I wrote WASTE, my time on gratuitous descriptions of everything, especially when I am not overly in love with the book anyway. Young adult fiction? So fast and easy and if it’s lame, (shrug), it’s 185 pages. I’m done reading it in two hours. But Ursula Hegi, I slogged through this for four days, an unheard of amount of time for me and then, I admit to skimming the last 20% of the book. I had a life I needed to get back to.

And now I’m laughing at myself. You’re probably going, “you just wrote a huge paragraph overly describing why you don’t love this book without even mentioning what the book was about. You are just like Ursula Hegi.” And I would argue that my goodreads reviews have never been chosen for Oprah’s booklist and so, are held to a much lower standard.

This book centers on the life of Thekla Jahnsen, a teacher to a class of 10 year old boys. It’s set in 1934, a year after the burning of the Reichstag and the book jacket led me to believe it would be about how one woman (Thekla) could become so seduced by the Hitler propaganda that she would encourage her class of boys to join the movement. Instead, I got a warbling, timeline-jumping story about Thekla’s parentage which frankly ended up being so predictable that it caused the aforementioned skimming. And thus, I concluded my final attempt with Ms. Hegi’s writing.
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Aug 30, 2011 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the first of Hegi's book that I've read in spite of being intrigued by the reviews years ago of her book Stones from the River. I have many German friends, nearly all of whom were born and raised in Germany, coming to this country as teenagers when their parents emigrated from Germany or as adults, having married an American, although one of my friends, now in her 80's, joined the Wehrmacht at age 16, at the end of the war, when clearly all was lost for Germany. The younger friends, now...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

"That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also." Heinrich Heine

Books selected for Oprah's Book Club are not supposed to be ones that wind up having a profound impact on one's soul, but that's exactly what happened to mine when O named Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River as one of her 1997 selections.

For me personally, February 1997 was a bit of a challenging time (we were in Infertility Hell). So it's a bit of an understatement to say that I related to and...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

In Children and Fire, Hegi revisits the German town that was the setting for her earlier novel, Stones From the River. The era is the early twentieth century, post WWI, pre WWII, as Hitler and the Third Reich are changing the German political and social landscape as they rise to power. Hegi's theme, in both this book and "Stones" is the exploration of how it could have happened. I always wondered how good, kind, ordinary German citizens allowed the rantings of a madman to sway their good sense a...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Susan Katz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

This book has inspired me to immediately seek out the rest of Hegi's Burgdorf cycle. I'd read and loved Stones from the River, and when I read a review of this book set in the same small German village in the first half of the twentieth century, a companion book to Stones, I got hold of it immediately. Characters who in the first book were minor here spring to full life. Wilhelm Jansen, the shell-shocked veteran, reveals here his earlier history, his marriage to a pregnant woman and the fate of...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Carl rated it 4 of 5 stars

I may be one of the few who read this without having read any of her previous books (altho Stones has been on my mental to-read list since before Oprah named it one of her recommendations), but there it was on the New Books shelf of our little library...

Do we need another book about how ordinary Germans were swept up by Nazi hysteria (or chose to be, rather than get swept away)? Maybe not, but this was well done, and seemed to capture the feelings of ordinary people. Of course, there is much mor...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Dee rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was very hard to get into. And when I got into it, it was still hard going. I didn't much like the narrative convention of having those chapters of the boy students' conversations during class interspersed with Thekla Jensen's thoughts. I guess she used it to bring immediacy to the story of the time of Hitler's rise in Germany. I guess Theckla was supposed to represent the German who knew better, but kept making excuses for the excesses Hitler's machine had begun to do.

The story of her...more

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May 28, 2011 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my first experience with this author and it was incredible. She paints pictures with her words, one brush stroke at a time. Concisely and clearly, she reveals the conflict and the shocking resolution, which - as a reader, you know that shortly after this day World War II will begin.

The book is many stories twisting together and introducing different characters. The main protagonist is Thekla, a German teacher who has finally secured a position in a Catholic school. The day is in 1934. Th...more This is my first experience with this author and it was incredible. She paints pictures with her words, one brush stroke at a time. Concisely and clearly, she reveals the conflict and the shocking resolution, which - as a reader, you know that shortly after this day World War II will begin.

The book is many stories twisting together and introducing different characters. The main protagonist is Thekla, a German teacher who has finally secured a position in a Catholic school. The day is in 1934. Thekla is teaching the boys in her class through example, first hand experience, and redirecting their attention so the children will not tell on each other or turn in their own parents for not being patriotic.

Thekla's day progresses while we flash on her memories, her ideas, and her made-up conversation with Sonja Siderova, the converted Christian from Jewish teacher who was put on administrative leave once her Jewishness was uncovered.

The book flashes a lot on different times which is not confusing. There are actually 2 distinct times that alternate. The book starts with Thekla teaching her boys then flashes back to 1899 when Thekla was but an illegitimate fetus in her mother's womb at a Catholic home for unwed girls. It is here that we come to understand her mother, her father, and her biological father who plays a part in Thekla's upbringing without her knowing his true role.

Foreshadowing is beautifully weaved through the pages as the reader understands that the burning of the Reichstag, one year earlier, is only the beginning of the many fires. The most moving is a quote by Heinrich Heine: "That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

The book is beautifully written, drawing upon symbolism while Thekla grapples with her stance. She believes she can continue to sit on the fence. She can believe what she chooses and enjoy her moral standing while enforcing the new laws of the land that continue to constrict the freedoms of individuals. (less)

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Oct 09, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

With the luxury of time, we look back and ask ourselves: how did so many educated and cultured people become manipulated by a madman – Hitler—to justify torture and genocide?

The answers we come up with are all too often dismissive and simplistic – a good vs. evil dichotomy. In reality, the answer is far more nuanced, and Ursula Hegi captures how a surge of national unity goes so very wrong and how the absence of complexity or doubt can lead even good people astray.

Set in Burgdorf, Germany, a tea...more With the luxury of time, we look back and ask ourselves: how did so many educated and cultured people become manipulated by a madman – Hitler—to justify torture and genocide?

The answers we come up with are all too often dismissive and simplistic – a good vs. evil dichotomy. In reality, the answer is far more nuanced, and Ursula Hegi captures how a surge of national unity goes so very wrong and how the absence of complexity or doubt can lead even good people astray.

Set in Burgdorf, Germany, a teacher, Thekla Jansen, is entrusted with teaching a classroom of boys the year after the parliament building is burned. Like so many, she is not enamoured of Hitler and believes that his time will be limited and things will soon go back to normal. She even rationalizes that her charges may benefit from joining the Hitler-Jugend, with its unity and songs and bonfires.

As books get burned and the country becomes enraptured over a new savior, Thekla teaches a Schiller poem, about a young diver’s courage and death. But the last stanza – the one that focuses on his hubris, as the young diver steps toward the mad king and leaps into the rough waters, is left out. For now, she thinks, “let them believe that the young page gets to keep the golden cup. Let them believe he gets the princess and the fairy-tale ending…”

The problem is, it’s difficult to separate propaganda from truth and, as Thekla discovers “being true to yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you are truthful…After all, she has felt that reverence as child in church, the emotional pitch that proves your transformation. Easy enough to use that reverence in politics.”

Thekla’s awakening is gradual as she begins to realize that individual freedom is different from national freedom, and that it’s become too easy to rationalize giving up those freedoms to live. In this, Children and Fire is a cautionary tale, not only to understand the Hitler era but for our times.

I wanted to award this book its fifth star except for a few flaws. The author tries too hard – in my opinion – to weave in other books of the Burgdorf Cycle, most notably Stones from the River; it doesn’t quite feel organic. More troubling, she relies on a rather tired plot device about parentage to demonstrate how vulnerable we all are. Despite these flaws, this is a worthy, thoughtful, and important book that dares to ask the question: “What would YOU do in Thekla’s place?” Most of us, I’m afraid, would come up wanting.

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Aug 31, 2011 Heather Doherty rated it 3 of 5 stars

For now I'm giving this book only 3 stars. I snatched it from the new releases shelf at the library without reading the jacket because Hegi's Stones from the River is one of my favorite books. I am not quite sure how I feel about this book. It was powerful and disturbing, the writing was beautiful, but something was missing. The story takes place in the same small town in Germany where "Stones" is set but a few years earlier, well before WWII, when Hitler was newly in power. The main narrative s...more

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Apr 26, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

"A haze shivered around the flames and smoke, like a second breath, and Thekla wondered if standing here meant she was one of these people...Until now, she had taken for granted that she had moral courage, but suddenly she didn't know if it was possible to defer moral courage, conserve it, and if it would still be there for her, or if each moment like this would take her into another silent agreement, and another yet, until she'd find herself agreeing to what she'd never imagined, and she would...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Eileend rated it 3 of 5 stars

No spoilers.

Blurb: A paradigm case of how doing the wrong thing might not even seem like it at the time. A well-meaning, reasonably thoughtful young teacher in Germany just before World War II.

Longer version: I liked this book a lot, but somehow, I skated on the surface the entire time. It's a novel about understanding one's own self, both as the child of our parents and finding out if we are the courageous, ethical person that it's so easy to believe we are. The young teacher who finds herself...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Tracey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Tracey by: Rose Ash

I love Ursula Hegi's books. This one for some reason felt darker to me than others of her books that I have read. (Oh, how paradoxical that I would find others of her WWII/Holocaust-filled books NOT dark! Creepy me!) Anyway, I recommend it for the continued visit to Hegi's town of Burgdorf. It's set in pre-war days, but involves the "Hilter-Jugend" and other scary pre-war politics, taboos, paranoia, etc. I know some of my friends think I'm a freak to be so obsessed w/WWII and the Holocaust. It o...more

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Nov 06, 2011 Fergie rated it 4 of 5 stars

The only complaint (if it can be called that) was that I didn't want the book to end...it left me craving to know what happened next. Ursula Hegi has earned her place as my favorite modern day writer. I've read all of her novels and have yet to be disappointed. "Stones From The River" is, in my opinion, one of the greatest novels ever written. No one weaves a story like Hegi and pulls the reader into the past, making the stories relevant and timely while evoking imaginative heights of a great no...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Rayna rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read Stones from the River a few years ago and saw this at the library. Since I enjoyed Hegi's storytelling and they way she brought all the happenings of the little town of Burgdorf to life, I decided to give this book a shot.

Then, lo and behold, this book is also set in Burgdorf. Had I done my research, I'd have learned that there is actually Burgdorf Cycle. I've clearly been reading out of order, but since each book appears to follow different characters (possibly focusing on different tim...more

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Jun 14, 2011 Chrissie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: germany, hf, kindle

NO SPOILERS!!!

Through Chapter Two and a little more: Yesterday I finished the marvellous memoir A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan by Netofer Pazira. I gave it five stars, but having just finished a memoir, I wanted a novel. But which? I had read all of the books loaded into my Kindle! Since I am so picky about how an author writes, I checked my GR list of books that are available on Kindle, deciding to sample a few until I found one I could not put down. I found it - Ursula Hegi'...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Beth rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was supposed to be one day in Germany in 1934 with flashbacks to a teacher's background to try and help us understand her as she gives up more and more of her values to espouse those dictated by Hitler for classroom teaching. I slogged through the protions telling about teaching days. I felt it took days and days. The children did not come alive for me. I enjoyed hearing the story of the teacher, Thekla Jansen as she grew up with a beloved father who lost his mental faculties eventually and...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars

Set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegi's Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transform the lives of the townspeople. At the core of this remarkable novel is the question of how one teacher—-gifted and joyful, passionate and inventive—-can become seduced by propaganda during the early months of Hitler's regime and encourage her ten-year-old students to join the "Hitler-Jugend" with its hikes and songs and bonfires. Membership, she believes, will be a step toward better sch...more

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Jun 22, 2011 Friederike Knabe rated it 3 of 5 stars

In her new novel, "Children and Fire", Ursula Hegi tells the story of Thekla Jansen, a teacher in the fictional German village of Burgdorf, familiar to readers of the author's previous novels. Taking for the most part the perspective of her heroine, Hegi explores, from the inside out so to say, the emotional confusion and moral dilemmas that Germans were confronting with the Nazis' rise to power. The author sets the stage effectively, and while alluding to pivotal historical events, she focuses...more In her new novel, "Children and Fire", Ursula Hegi tells the story of Thekla Jansen, a teacher in the fictional German village of Burgdorf, familiar to readers of the author's previous novels. Taking for the most part the perspective of her heroine, Hegi explores, from the inside out so to say, the emotional confusion and moral dilemmas that Germans were confronting with the Nazis' rise to power. The author sets the stage effectively, and while alluding to pivotal historical events, she focuses her attention on one specific day in February 1934.

Thekla, privately critical of the regime's new politics, wavers when it comes to sharing her views. Most of her questioning is realized through her almost continuous inner monologue: "How much must I try to find out? Once you know, it's tricky to keep the knowing at bay, to press it back into the before-knowing[...][O]r can I decide to be satisfied with not knowing beyond what we are told?". She knows, for example, that she was given her teaching position only because her own former teacher and admired mentor, Fräulein Siderova, was fired because she is Jewish. Yet, Thekla refuses to dwell on any "reason" and instead, again only in her mind, justifies herself to the older teacher: she accepted the position "temporarily" until... Until when? "It can't last. Once the regime wears itself down, I'll get back to my own moral compass, to who I was before."

Hegi effectively illustrates Thekla's dilemma and ambivalence by taking the reader into the centre of her day's activities: the classroom. Seeing the majority of "her boys" enthusiastically showing off the brown shirts of the "Hitler Jugend", she wonders how she can guide the children on a path of tolerance and open-mindedness while at the same time accepting or even promoting their participation in a youth movement that preaches the opposite? She only wants what is best for them, she convinces herself. She is also very conscious of the effectiveness of the early Nazi propaganda exerted on the minds of the young, well exemplified by some boys' behaviour. "Appalling, how much her boys expose about their families in all innocence. She would never turn them in, Still, others might."

The young teacher's indecision and willingness to conform may be rooted also in her background. Born as an illegitimate child to a teenage mother, and adopted by the man she called "Vati", her childhood was divided between poverty at home and privilege offered by the wealthy Michel Abramowitz. Resented by her siblings and Michel's children and their mother, she learned early on how to manoeuvre everything to her advantage. Despite persistent rumours that link her parentage to Michel, Thekla appears to be oblivious to or deliberately suppressing the truth of her mixed heritage. How long can she pretend ignorance and go along with the increasingly vicious Nazi propaganda? How long can she be torn between being "repulsed" by the propaganda and "being sucked into the swirl of song and of fire, into the emotions of the mass, that passion and urgency, that longing for something beyond them, something great..." ?

Eventually, external events may force Thekla to confront who she really is: "What happens if you're no longer who you believed you were? What do you do with the knowledge of that? And what if who you're becoming goes against that you believed about yourself until you won't remember who you were before?"

"Children and Fire" can be read at different levels. First and foremost it is the touching story of one young woman during the 1930s in Germany and her struggle to get ahead in life while hoping to stay true to her "moral centre". At a deeper level, Hegi uses Thekla to ask complex questions of moral integrity and personal courage that more than one generation in Germany was confronted with at the time. It may also have relevance for other crisis situations. For me the overall question remains whether a novel today, more than 75 years after the events, can deliver new aspects and insights that have not been addressed until now in the many books, fiction and non-fiction, written since, including Hegi's own earlier novel Stones from the River. Readers will have different reactions to this question and, also, to the relevance of the novel in this regard. Hegi's book is engaging and very well written; she addresses successfully the range of moral questions that "ordinary people" might have grappled with at the time. For me the novel's weaknesses are more on a structural level and have to do with balance between different strands of narrative, the prominence of the inner monologue over other ways of conveying the depth and drama of the story, and the ending which left me less than satisfied. Some factual details seem somewhat improbable to me, but these are minor in the overall picture.(less)

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Aug 18, 2012 Debra S rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

This was a Goodreads first read book. As always thanks to the publisher for providing copies through this program

Hegi has written a tale of life during the early Nazi regime in a small German town. Thekla, a young teacher who idolizes her mentor, it torn between her duty to her boys and her desire to survive. Her mentor, Sonja, has been set aside by the local school due to her Jewish ancestry. During this one day, Thekla learns that she also is of Jewish ancestry and must let go her desire to me...more

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Oct 05, 2011 Melissa rated it 2 of 5 stars

When I initially read about this book I was very excited to pick this one up, as this subject matter is of interest to me. However...this book isn't very long and yet I am not even halfway through after nearly a week. The narrative just isn't grabbing me at all, the story feels all over the place and at times I am unsure of which story line I am being tossed into as there are several things going on at once with no notice. I will continue reading and try to pull something positive out of this bo...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Barb howe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River is one of my favorite books. I was afraid this one wouldn't measure up but as I just finished it and am soaking it in, I think it does.

Lyrical and moving, the story is a compassionate and terrifying view of ordinary people at the brink of an extraordinary time. How did we let it (Hitler, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, Nazis etc.) happen? "Each indignity [was] made possible by the previous one". How did the madness at one time make sense to us? If you ever asked su...more

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Nov 20, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

For a book that relies as heavily on interior monologue as this one, the pace is really well-managed. Although my memory of Stones from a River is faded, I also liked to return to Trudy, if from a side angle. The questions of loyalty and friendship were both complex and effective. I like how Hegi respects the complexity of human relationships.

I didn't go five stars because there is an omniscient narrator voice that throws in the future, although much of the book is centered in a single day, wit...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Cynthia rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like good books

So you are sick to death of reading about the Holocaust?

Please just be quiet and read this book. Oh, but read "Stones from the River" first.

Better now?

(Page 69)"What the parishioners and the priest didn't know was that the Siderovas distrusted the ritual of confession. They seemed so devout as they knelt in the dim confessional. But all they fed the priest were made-up sins because they suspected all priests disturbed the garden of secrets by tearing at the roots."

(Page 165)"Exercising for the F...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Kristina rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: women, teachers, students

Recommended to Kristina by: self recommended/Hegi fan

Shelves: death, grief-and-loss, historical-fiction, holocaust-era, racism, suicide, adoption, teachers-and-students, catholicism, germany

Children and Fire is a beautifully written story that ties in very well with Ursula Hegi's other Burgdorf series. Hegi has such a masterful grip on the ability to give voice to inner thought life of each and every one of her characters that it's mesmerizing. She gives words to emotions and experiences that can seem to sacred or painful for spoken language to suffice..."God's will" she had been consoled three times, "while she dreamed of strangling God. Three times she imagined yanking God from H...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this passage at the end of the book sums it up nicely: "What seemed so benevolent at first--equality and community and employment for everyone--turned out to be lies that the Fuhrer slipped into schools and homes, seducing and warping, until the people believed they were choosing for themselves; and out of this, they fabricated tales that were more distorted then mismatched fairy-tale blocks, more bizarre than any toymaker would have invented"....but these fabricated and distorted tales...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

A continuation of her series on a small village in pre-war Germany called Burgdorf. A teacher is in a moral quandry, knowing the Nazi/Hitler stirrings are wrong and will lead to war but hesitant to make waves that might cause her to lose her job. She has replaced her former teacher who was fired for being a Jewess. Although the reader knows quite early that the heroine is a Jew due to an affair that her mother had, the heroine only finds out at the end, adding to her fear and confusion. A good g...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Terri Jacobson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, jewish-themed

This is the 4th book in Ursula Hagi's Burgdorf Cycle, named after the town in Germany where the stories are set. This novel follows a teacher and her 10 year-old male students, with all the action taking place on a day in February, 1934. The story also includes flashbacks to earlier times in the town, involving many of the same characters you find in other volumes of the cycle. The book does well in capturing the mood and events of 1930s Germany, with the rise of the Nazis as back-story. There i...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Carmen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: popular-fiction

Set in Burgdorf, a village on the German Rhein, this story depicts a young teacher who is trying to figure out what to do when her ideals are different than the growing fascination with Hitler. The story moves back and forth between her conception and early childhood to her life as an adult teaching elementary school aged boys. Making peace with herself also involves discovering her roots. This leads to a painful discovery. What is expertly done is depicting how the average person may have strug...more

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About Ursula Hegi

Ursula Hegi is the author of Sacred Time, Hotel of the Saints, The Vision of Emma Blau, Tearing the Silence, Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, Intrusions, and Trudi & Pia. She is the recipient of more than thirty grants and awards.

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“The absence of doubt will turn humans into beasts.” — 2 people liked it

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