The Yellow Bird Sings

January 20, 2020
Rosner’s moving if unsurprising debut novel (after the memoir If a Tree Falls) follows a mother and daughter’s struggles to survive the Holocaust. In 1941, after Jewish Róża’s parents and husband are killed by the Nazis in Poland,
she finds refuge for herself and her daughter, five-year-old Shira, in the barn of Henryk and his wife, Krystyna, gentiles who had patronized her family bakery, though Róża is only able to extend their stay by sleeping with Henryk. Rosner is at her best in the book’s earliest sections, as she conveys Róża’s efforts to balance comfort for Shira with the need to keep their presence in the barn a secret. Róża cleverly enlists Shira’s cooperation in keeping quiet by spinning stories of a young girl and a yellow bird that can voice the musical compositions written by the child. After a year of shelter, Nazi troops tell Henryk they will appropriate the barn, and Róża reluctantly consents to a plan crafted by Krystyna for her and Shira to escape separately. With Shira hidden in a convent and Róża fleeing through the snow-covered woods, Rosner switches between points of view to craft a wrenching chronicle of their separate journeys, though the conclusion suffers from schmaltz. This will offer few surprises to avid readers of Holocaust fiction.