Josef tells Becca about his own experience as a gay man who was imprisoned in a work camp Gemma's story as a Jewish woman who escaped death and the story of Becca's grandfather, Avenger.

Turns out that he and a band of partisans rescued her from the extermination camp, where she was the sole survivor amongst thousands of Jews who were gassed to death. Josef, who is now a very old man, gives Becca the skinny on what really happened to Gemma, who had never told her family about her life in Europe. You'll never guess who!īut based on the story so far, you should probably guess that it's Gemma. All of Gemma's clues point there, but it's literally a dead end: everyone says that no female Nazi prisoners made it out of Chelmno alive.īut then Becca and Magda happen upon a man called Josef Potocki, who tells them that one woman did in fact make it out of Chelmno. With Magda, her jolly Polish translator, Becca makes her way to Chelmno, a tiny town that was the site of a terrible extermination camp during the war. So Becca heads to Poland to investigate further. before the beginning of World War II, but her documents suggest that she arrived in 1944. The family had thought that Gemma, who was Jewish, came to the U.S. When a box of Gemma's old things, including some photos and an immigration form, surface, Becca begins to wonder if Gemma's story could relate back to her experience in the Old World. What was up with the way that everyone in the entire kingdom fell asleep forever, for example? Shouldn't they have woken up at some point? And how come Becca never noticed how bizarre this bedtime story was until now?īriar Rose was a far cry from Goodnight Moon, that's for sure. There were a few minor details that were…well, kind of untraditional. Gemma makes Becca solemnly swear to find the castle, which is her 'inheritance.' Then she dies, so Becca's pretty much obligated to follow through on her promise.īecca gets to thinking about that bedtime story Grandma had told her so many times. Is this an old woman's ranting and raving? Becca doesn't think so. She seems taken with the notion that she herself is Briar Rose, and insists she really did come from a castle, just like in the story. Now 23, Becca's all grown up, and Grandma Gemma, who's in a nursing home, is nearing the end of her life.

Briar Rose, which was Grandma Gemma's remix of Sleeping Beauty, was beloved by her granddaughters-especially Becca, who is the baby in her family. Well, technically, it was just one bedtime story, but she must have told it at least a thousand times. Once upon a time-sorry, we couldn't resist-there was a little old lady who was super into telling bedtime stories.

Jane yolen's briar rose