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by Deborah Schnitzer (Author)
Inventive and precocious, Anne-g, ten, and Stellar, seven, aided by an unstable apparition they call the Child, bring their light and love to a search for truths buried by devastating family secrets. They are aided further by stories they decipher, given it seems, from the Child and through turbulent forces within the Canadian Shield's West Hawk Lake where they live. Though the adults around them dismiss their insight, it lives fiercely within them.
Unshaken in their resolve, they discover, to their peril, the ongoing menace embodied in Third Reich fantasies conceived as "Hitler's children" the ideal Aryan, the dirty Jewish, and the bred Lebensborn child. This fascist plague contaminates their attempt to recover their "real mother," the one they believe stolen by "the nazi" who seems to haunt the woods. Fearful yet resilient, unhomed yet undaunted, they dedicate themselves to repairing family bonds broken by darknesses they struggle to comprehend but are compelled to confront.
The Woman Who Swallowed West Hawk Lake reveals the truth-telling courage of children. Might its transformative energy, even in the midst of loss, awaken anew our devotion to the rights of children and the eradication of the evil that can destroy their lives.
