In the spring of 1942 Czech Resistance fighters assassinate the head of Nazi-Occupied Czechoslovakia. On the flimsiest of evidence, the Nazi high command sends troops to demolish the small Czech town of Lidice, execute the town's men, and abduct and racially profile its women and children. The Pear Tree tells the story of the assassination and its effects on:
Chessie Sabel, sent to the Ravensbruck forced labor camp in Germany, who writes a letter every month to her ten-year-old son Ondrej, even though other inmates tell her it is fruitless: the children of Lidice have been gassed to death.
Klaudie Cizek, who finds fragments of information in the Ravensbruck administrative office that lead her to believe some of the children, including her daughter Adele, may still be alive.
Thirteen-year-old Milan Tichy who joins the Czech Resistance to find and interrogate Nazi captors and learn where they have taken his pregnant mother.
Wolfgang Weber, a German policeman who befriends a pregnant Czech woman about to give birth.
Karl Hermann Frank, the Nazi official who orders the destruction of the town and the Germanization of its women and children.
Though set in the 1940s in Eastern Europe, The Pear Tree could not be timelier. With the rise of nationalism, racism and xenophobia in countries across the globe, minority groups are being labeled as different, suspicious or inferior because of their nationality, ethnicity, religion or race.
The Pear Tree takes readers inside the minds of people who are categorized as outsiders and how that changes the way they view themselves. It explores the insidiousness of bigotry that turns son against mother, neighbor against neighbor, and friend away from friend.