Excerpt from The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

and the red lady said, I'll have him, he looks nice

and the nurse said, in that case you must take the big one as well

the red lady, oh no, I don't want him, he's too ugly

the nurse, I'm sorry but we don't separate siblings

the red lady, well, too bad, if I have to I'll take the ugly one as well.

That was that. He and Helmut went with the red lady for a ride on the 71 tram. It was August and he was enjoying the warm wind that blew in through the half-open windows when, after a while, he became baffled by the oddly familiar street outside. Then it dawned on him: the tram was going along Simmeringer Hauptstrasse. This was literally home from home. He even caught a quick glimpse of the greengrocer, Mr Gabel, keeping an eye on the fruit boxes he put out on the pavement every morning. Mrs Haidinger, the lady in the red dress, was sitting opposite him and, as soon as she saw him turn to look out, she reached across the centre aisle and twisted his head to make him look straight ahead. Afterwards, she didn't take her eyes off him for a second, as if she was worried that he would run away at the next stop or maybe do something worse, like jump at her throat. At close quarters, Mrs Haidinger looked rather less impressive than she had done in the tiled room. Below the hem of her red dress her legs were big and knobbly, and when she smiled, her closely packed, short white teeth reminded Adrian of a crocodile. She acted differently with Helmut, touching him all the time, patting his blond curls, and when they stepped off at Zentralfriedhof to change trams, she went into a shop near the cemetery gates to buy her new little boy a bar of Bensdorp chocolate that cost ten groschen. Obviously, Adrian got nothing because he was so ugly. They got off at the Kaiserebersdorf stop and took a shortcut across the fields and deserted building sites. That way, it was only a ten-minute walk to the Haidingers' house. Over on the far side of the fields, you could see the jagged outline of the chimneys of Schwechat and when the wind came from that direction it carried the rich scent of malt from the breweries. Mrs Haidinger lived in a large bungalow built to house two families. Mr and Mrs Haidinger, together with her parents, stayed in the rooms on the left, and on the right were her brother Rudolf Pawlitschek and his family. The two lines of the clan were feuding and Mrs Haidinger's notion of bringing back a couple of foster children did nothing to improve the atmosphere. Mr Pawlitschek was a cripple. Just below his shoulder, where his left arm should have begun, was nothing but a small flap of skin. It might be because he wasn't serviceable, as Mrs Haidinger put it, that he was such an angry, bitter man. He called the children mongrels and did everything he could to make them feel worthless and rejected. Adrian was set to work from his first day in the Haidinger household. The large back garden included a barn with pens for cows and goats, and a hen house and rabbit hutches. Adrian had to collect greens for the rabbits, clean dung from the coops and hutches, then scrub them with soda. The goats had to be tethered and moved on when they had stripped the patch of land within reach. If Mr Haidinger needed to water his lettuces, onions, strawberries and tomatoes, Adrian was to haul buckets of water from the well and barrow them to the right plot. He was never paid any wages for his labour. Even though he shared a bedroom with his little brother, they didn't see much of each other. While Adrian worked, Helmut accompanied Mrs Haidinger on her visits to relatives and friends and brought back gifts, new toys or chocolates from the Konsum. Much later, Adrian realised that the city council in Wien made large payments to foster parents who gave the children the right kind of home. The benefits not only covered Mrs Haidinger's outlays for board and lodging of both children but also left her quite enough to spend on new clothes for Helmut, who grew so awfully quickly, and probably on quite a few outfits for herself. Years later, the thought of this still upset Adrian very much. If all that money was there for the asking, he said to his mother, why not give some of it to you so we could have grown up at home? But his mother only shrugged helplessly in the rather childish way she had adopted of late and replied that she really couldn't say. But perhaps the authorities had decided to give you just one chance in life to bring up your children the right way, and perhaps she had squandered hers when they had been forced to carry their belongings down into the yard and Mr Schubach had had thrown them out and left them all in the rain while their neighbours lined the galleries, smoking and watching the spectacle.

Excerpted from The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg. Copyright © 2016 by Steve Sem-Sandberg. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.