The Big War: The Klipfish Code by Mary Casanova

At the next clearing Marit stopped and looked back. Godoy and the surrounding islands rose like humpback whales from the sparkling sea. So much had remained the same. The same sea, the same deeply carved fjords, the same towering mountains beyond. Nearly two years had passed since she'd last returned home from skiing in the mountains with her family--two long years since bombs fell and her world collapsed.

Through the cedar's long branches, a man whispered, "Don't move... ." "Help me...finish."

"Finish what?"

"Mission--f-for Norway!"

Every moment that she lingered drew her into his fate. And if she helped him, she would be putting not only herself at great risk. Stories she'd heard from the islanders flashed through her mind. Whole families removed in the middle of the night, whole villages bombed beyond recognition, simply because one person was caught helping the Resistance. She remembered the warning posted on Bestefar's boat: "You shall not in any way give shelter to or aid the enemy. To do so is punishable by death."

At this moment in time, twelve-year-old Marit has to decide, as so many citizens of Norway had to do in those years of Nazi occupation.

Seeking to find safety for Marit and her young brother Lars, her parents, drawn by their patriotism to join the Resistance, have sent the children to live with their domineering, silent grandfather, Bestefar, and schoolteacher aunt Ingeborg on Godoy Island just off the western coast. But there is no safety even on Godoy: the Nazis occupy this small island with its strategic position near shipping channels and confiscate whatever they need from the farmer-fisherman community--eggs, milk, produce, even the blankets and down comforters that keep the children warm through the arctic nights. Families who willingly abet the occupiers are shunned; their pastor leaves his pulpit rather than preach the German doctrine, and their Aunt Ingeborg becomes one of the one in ten teachers who are sent to a northern concentration camp as a warning to teachers who refuse to instruct students as the Nazi government decrees.

Although Bestefar has ordered her to do nothing to attract the attention of their occupiers, Marit remembers the courage of her Aunt Ingeborg and agrees to help the wounded Resistance fighter. Rowing several miles along the stormy coastline with Lars and his cat along to make the trip look like a childish expedition, she finally makes her way to the next coastal village and with the code words "Do you have any klipfish?" passes on the compass given her by the wounded man. Risking her family's lives, Marit rows the wounded man back under the noses of the Nazi watchers and hides him in their barn's hayloft. Marit struggles to care for the dying man while keeping her secret from her grandfather, but when he wakes her a few nights later and hides her and Lars with other Resistance fighters in the hold of his small fishing boat bound for the Shetland Islands, Marit realizes that Bestefar, too, has been secretly aiding the escape of known Resistance fighters all along.

Mary Casanova's The Klipfish Code is a harrowing narration based on true stories of the Norwegian resistance during World War II. Marit is a complex protagonist whose character evolves from the frightened ten-year-old who first experiences the bombing of her home in Isfjorden to the mature fifteen-year-old who is finally reunited with her parents and homeland at the conclusion. Well plotted and grounded in the local setting and tautly written, this book should take its place with other historical novels of the Scandinavian resistance such as Lois Lowry's Newbery Award-winning Number the Stars and Marie McSwigan's classic Snow Treasure.