When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

by Alice Hoffman

When Anne was done with dinner, Edith took the bowl and rinsed it at the sink. Anne rose to go, but her mother said, “Wait.” Now she will tell me more of what I’ve done wrong, Anne thought, for she always expected her mother to be critical, but instead, Edith reached under the sink and took out a small tin box. Inside were the earrings and gold necklace Oma had given her on her eighteenth birthday that Anne had seen her hiding soon after the bombs had fallen. Edith held out the necklace. “For you,” she said. Anne took a step back. There was something wrong in this. She was too young for such a special gift. She was the little sister, the one who never pleased her mother, the one who wasn’t so special after all. “You don’t have to give it to me,” she stammered. “Of course I don’t have to,” her mother told her. “I want to.” “I can’t wear it anyway.” She’d heard that Germans tore the jewelry off Jewish women in the street, grabbing the rings from their fingers. “You don’t have to wear it outside, you can keep it where it is, and you’ll know it’s yours,” Edith said. “Even if it’s hidden.” Anne lifted her eyes to her mother’s. It was then that she saw something she’d never expected. She saw that her mother would do anything for her, that she would search the world over for her if Anne fell into the underworld; she would make the trees turn brown and shake them with all her might until they lost their leaves, she would scour the whole world until she found her daughter. They did...