Excerpt from Mischling by Affinity Konar, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Was I stupid to think this? Or feebleminded? Would the thought have occurred to me in a place free of flame-licked winds and white-winged doctors? These are fair questions. I think of them often, but I have never tried to answer them. The answers don't belong to me. All I know: I stared at the body, and the only words I could summon weren't my own. They were from a song I'd heard played on a smuggled record player in our ghetto basement. Whenever I'd heard the song, it had improved me. So I gave these words a try. " 'Would you like to swing on a star?' " I sang to the body.

Not a sound, not a stir. Was it the fault of my squeaky voice? I tried again.

" 'Carry moonbeams home in a jar?' " I sang.

It was pathetic of me to try, I know, but I had always believed in the world's ability to right itself, just like that, with a single kindness. And when kindness is not around, you invent new orders and systems to believe in, and there, in that moment—whether it was stupidity or feeblemindedness—I believed in a body's ability to animate itself with the breath of a word. But it was obvious that these lyrics were not the right words at all. None of them could unlock the life of the body or were powerful enough to repair it. I searched for another word, a good word, to give—there had to be a word, I was sure of it—but the guard wouldn't let me finish. He pulled me away and forced us to press on, anxious to have us showered and processed and numbered so that our time in Mengele's zoo could begin.

Auschwitz was built to imprison us. Birkenau was built to kill us. Mere kilometers bridged their attached evils. What this zoo was designed for, I did not know—I could only swear that Pearl and I, we would never be caged.

Excerpted from Mischling by Affinity Konar. Copyright © 2016 by Affinity Konar. Excerpted by permission of Lee Boudreaux Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.