A beautiful novel exploring the little-known story of Anne Frank's life before she went into hiding - from bestselling, award-winning author Alice Hoffman and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House. In soaring prose, bestselling author Alice Hoffman brings Anne Frank to life on the page, drawing from her extensive research in Europe and the United States, to depict her experiences from the moment the Nazis invade the Netherlands until her family is forced into hiding in the annex of her father's office building at 263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam. As state-sponsored discrimination turns ordinary people into monsters, the Jews of the Netherlands are caught in an inescapable swell of violence and hate, and Anne is shaped as both a young woman and as a writer who will change the world. WHEN WE FLEW AWAYfeatures archival content provided by the Anne Frank House, as well as information about Otto Frank's desperate bids to get his family to safety in America gathered from correspondence between Otto Frank and Nathan Straus, Jr., from the Straus Historical Society's Archives. A heart-wrenching exploration of Anne's life before the annex By New York Times bestselling author of The World We Knew, Alice Hoffman Featuring archival content provided by the Anne Frank House

Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.