Excerpt from The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Jerusza was stunned into silence. The girl had not bested her at her own game before. "Never question me," she snapped at last. "Now shut up and come along."

It was inevitable that Yona would begin wondering about the world outside the woods. Jerusza had always known the time would come, and now it was heavy upon her to ensure that when the girl thought of civilization, she regarded it with the proper fear.

Jerusza had been teaching Yona all the languages she knew since she had taken her, and the child could speak f luent Yiddish, Polish, Belorussian, Russian, and German, as well as snippets of French and English. One must know the words of one's enemies, Jerusza always told her, and she was gratified by the fear she could see in Yona's eyes.

But she had more to teach, so on their forays into towns, she began to steal books, too. She taught the child to read, to understand science, to work with numbers. She insisted that Yona know the Torah and the Talmud, but she also brought her the Christian Bible and even the Muslim Quran, for God was everywhere, and the search for him was endless. It had consumed Jerusza's whole life, and it had brought her to that dark street corner in Berlin in the summer of 1922, where she'd been compelled to steal this child, who had become such a thorn in her side.

And though Yona irritated her more often than not, even Jerusza had to admit that the girl was bright, sensitive, intuitive. She drank the books down like cool water and listened with rapt attention whenever Jerusza deigned to impart her secrets. By the time Yona was fourteen, she knew more about the world than most men who'd been educated in universities. More important, she knew the mysteries of the forest, all the ways to survive.

As the girl's eyes opened to the world, Jerusza insisted upon only two things: One, Yona must always obey her. And two, she must always stay hidden in the forest, away from those who might hurt her.

Sometimes Yona asked why. Who would want to hurt her? What would they try to do?

But Jerusza never answered, for the truth was, she wasn't sure. She knew only that in the early-morning hours of July 6, 1922, as she hurried with a two-year-old child into the forest, she heard a voice from the sky, sharp and clear. One day, the voice said, her past will return—and it will alter the course of many lives, perhaps even taking hers. The only safe place is the forest.

It was the same voice that had told her to take the girl in the first place, the voice that had always whispered to Jerusza in the trees. Jerusza had spent most of her life thinking the voice belonged to God. But now, in the twilight of her life, she was no longer sure. What if the voice in her head belonged to her alone? What if it was the legacy of her mother's madness, a spark of insanity rather than a higher calling?

But each time those questions bubbled to the surface, Jerusza pushed them away. The voice from above had spoken, and who knew what fate awaited her if she failed to listen?

Excerpted from The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel. Copyright © 2021 by Kristin Harmel. Excerpted by permission of Gallery Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.