Excerpt from Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"It's a delivery, Grandpa," Miss Akkerman calls over her shoulder.

"It's who?"

"It's for me." She turns back to me and lowers her voice. "Hanneke, you have to help me. Theo is coming over tonight to ask my grandparents if I can move into his apartment. I need to figure out what to wear. Stay right here; I'll show you my options." I can't think of any dress that would make her grandparents approve of her living with her boyfriend before marriage, though I know this wouldn't be the first time this war made a young couple reject tradition.

When Miss Akkerman comes back to the foyer, I pretend to consider the two dresses she's brought, but really I'm watching the wall clock. I don't have time for socializing. After telling her to wear the gray one, I motion for her to take the packages I've been holding since I arrived. "These are yours. Would you like to make sure everything's all right?"

"I'm sure they're fine. Stay for coffee?"

I don't bother to ask if it's real. The only way she would have real coffee is if I'd brought it to her, and I hadn't, so when she says she has coffee, she means she has ground acorns or twigs. Ersatz coffee.

The other reason I don't stay is the same reason why I don't accept Miss Akkerman's repeated offer to call her Irene. Because I don't want her to confuse this relationship with friendship. Because I don't want her to think that if one day she can't pay, it doesn't matter.

"I can't. I still have another delivery before lunch."

"Are you sure? You could have lunch here—

I'm already going to make it— and then we could figure out just what to do with my hair for tonight."

It's a strange relationship I have with my clients. They think we're comrades. They think we're bound by the secret that we're doing something illegal together. "I always have lunch at home with my parents," I say.

"Of course, Hanneke." She's embarrassed for having pushed too far. "I'll see you later, then."

Outside, it's cloudy and overcast, Amsterdam winter, as I ride my bicycle down our narrow, haphazard streets. Amsterdam was built on canals. The country of Holland is low, lower even than the ocean, and the farmers who mucked it out centuries ago created an elaborate system of waterways, just to keep citizens from drowning in the North Sea. An old history teacher of mine used to accompany that piece of our past with a popular saying: "God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands." He said it like a point of pride, but to me, the saying was also a warning: "Don't rely on anything coming to save us. We're all alone down here."

Seventy- five kilometers to the south, at the start of the occupation two and a half years ago, the German planes bombed Rotterdam, killing nine hundred civilians and much of the city's architecture. Two days later, the Germans arrived in Amsterdam by foot. We now have to put up with their presence, but we got to keep our buildings. It's a bad trade- off. It's all bad trade- offs these days, unless, like me, you know how to mostly end up on the profitable side of things.

My next customer, Mrs. Janssen, is just a short ride away in a large blue house where she used to live with her husband and three sons, until one son moved to London, one son moved to America, and one son, the baby of the family, moved to the Dutch front lines, where two thousand Dutch servicemen were killed when they tried but failed to protect our borders as the country fell in five days' time. We don't speak much of Jan anymore.

I wonder if he was near Bas, though, during the invasion.

I wonder this about everything now, trying to piece together the last minutes of the boy I loved. Was he with Bas, or did Bas die alone?

Excerpted from Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse. Copyright © 2016 by Monica Hesse. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.