Freya Blackwood

"'When the enemy bombed the library, everything burned.' This is how Wild begins her rather dark tale of salvaging one important thing when everything else is broken or destroyed. A young boy's father had borrowed a book from that soon-to-be-burned library, and when the 'enemy' (never identified or hinted at) forces the people to leave their homes, the father chooses to take the book, sequestering it in an iron box. He tells the boy that the book is 'about our people, about us.