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

by Alice Hoffman

On her way home from school alone on a cold afternoon, Anne wondered if authors wrote for the same reason she had always read, to escape into another world. As she walked along the river, she began to imagine a story about a grandmother who watched over her granddaughter as if she were a guardian angel. The girl grew up to have a happy life, for even though there was sorrow in the world, her grandmother’s love was so strong she could feel it even when her grandmother departed from this world. Anne stopped beside the frozen river, but in her mind, she was inside her story. She was in a garden that was more beautiful than any she’d seen before, with twelve rosebushes, six that were red and six that were white. She imagined that she heard her grandmother’s voice. “Come see what has bloomed! Mind the bees!” Without thinking, Anne started to walk onto the ice as if she were entering the garden inside her mind. “You there!” a German soldier called to her. “What do you think you’re doing?” Anne felt her heart racing. She wasn’t inside her story anymore. She didn’t know what to do, so she looked down as the soldier approached. She was shaking; she knew she should have paid more attention to what she was doing, but there she was, on the edge of the ice. One more step and she would be breaking the law. He knew who she was, perhaps because of how frightened she looked, or maybe it was her dark glossy hair and her large expressive features, or maybe he merely guessed. “Jews cannot ska...