The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943--aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.

The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.

In this bittersweet work of historical fiction, Elise, now an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's recalls the days she and her family were forced to relocate first into a camp and then later sent back to Germany during the final year of the war. The only thing that made her time in the camp bearable was being reunited with her father, and the brief friendship she shared with another girl who was also forced to live in the camp. After the girls are separated they vow to one day reunite back in the states when they turn 18. Sadly they fell out of touch but Elise never forgot her friend. As both time and her memories are escaping from Elise, she travels alone in an attempt to reconnect with her long lost friend before it's too late.

I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author
Susan Meissner was born in San Diego, California, the second of three. She spent her childhood in just two houses.
Her first writings are a laughable collection of oddly worded poems and predictable stories she wrote when she was eight.

She attended Point Loma College in San Diego, and married her husband, Bob, who is now an associate pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves, in 1980. When she is not working on a new novel, she is directing the small groups ministries at The Church at Rancho Bernardo. She also enjoy teaching workshops on writing and dream-following, spending time with my family, music, reading great books, and traveling.