The Big War: Stepping on the Cracks by Mary Downing Hahn

There seem to be two types of novels about World War II. Books written by authors close to the period, such as Marie McSwigan's Snow Treasure or Robert Westall's Blitzcat, emphasize the suffering and courage of the those opposing the Axis powers. In the long years since World War II younger authors have also focused on the moral complexities of war for soldiers and civilians alike.

Mary Downing Hahn's Stepping on the Cracks brings great craft and sensitivity to one issue little considered by authors for young readers, desertion in time of war.

Margaret and her fearless friend Elizabeth spend the last days of summer, 1944, stamping down the sidewalks chanting "Step on a crack, break Hitler's back," but despite worry about their two older brothers fighting in the European theatre, the two girls are more immediately concerned about having the meanest teacher in the school for sixth grade and dodging class bully Gordy Smith, whose cruel attacks, drunken father, and ragamuffin family make him a pariah in their small Maryland town.

When Elizabeth persuades Margaret to help her get revenge by wrecking the hut in the woods where Gordy and his henchmen hang out, the two girls find that Gordy has been hiding his older brother Stuart, who deserted the Army after basic training. When the girls discover that Stuart is seriously ill with pneumonia, they face the dilemma of helping Gordy care for him or turning him over to the authorities for medical help. Stuart's defense of his opposition to taking human life even in a justified war move Margaret and Elizabeth to turn to a young war widow in the community for help in saving Stuart's life without turning him in.

As Margaret's family learns that her brother Jimmy has been killed in the Battle of the Bulge, the two girls clearly see the costs of the choice each of the two young men has made. Margaret's honest and penetrating first-person narrative drives home the ambiguity of war without sentimentality or partisanship.

Mary Downing Hahn was awarded the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction for Stepping on the Cracks. For another sensitive look at a much fictionalized American war, Hahn's Hear the Wind Blow (reviewed February 3 here) takes an eyes-wide-open look at the Civil War from the viewpoint of a boy caught up in the partisan cruelty of the last days of that conflict.