GIRL AT THE EDGE OF SKY

Girl at the Edge of Sky is a unique, thrilling, sometimes terrifying novel based on the life and death of Lily Litvyak, a female Soviet flying ace and fighter pilot shot down behind German lines in the Second World War. From the bestselling author of Web of Angels and The River Midnight.

Lily Litvyak is no one's idea of a fighter pilot: a tiny, dimpled teenager with golden curls who lied about her age in order to fly. But in the crucible of the air war against the German invaders, she becomes that rare thing--a flying ace, glorified at home and around the world as the White Lily of Stalingrad. The real Lily disappeared in combat in August 1943, and the facts of her life are slim, but they have inspired Lilian Nattel's indelible portrait of a courageous young woman driven by family secrets to become an unlikely war hero. Even more powerfully, Nattel takes another big leap, asking the compelling question: what if Lily survived that last crash and became a prisoner of the Germans?
Lily lives in a world of horrifying risk, where the life and death stakes are high in the air, but also on the ground. In the Soviet system, everyone is an informer, even your best friend. Lily lives in constant fear that she will be found out, arrested and executed as the daughter of an "enemy of the people." When she ends up a German prisoner, as a Soviet officer and a Jew, the need for deception becomes even more desperate.
Girl at the Edge of Sky is a masterwork of the imagination, subtle and bold all at once, bringing us deep into the precarious life of a remarkable woman who lies to fight for the country that would disown her, and then lies to survive the enemy that would annihilate her.

Lilian Nattel was born in Montreal and lives in Toronto with her husband and two daughters. Her first novel, The River Midnight, was published to international acclaim and won the Martin and Beatrice Fischer Jewish Book Award.




• Inspired by history and the author's own childhood dreams, Her War is a riveting reimagining of the life of Lily Litvak, one of only two female fighter pilots to earn the title of flying ace in history, presumed dead after being shot down by German bombers in WWII

• Featuring a dynamic cast of characters such as Lily's best-friend and complete opposite, Katie Budanova, the other female flying ace, unlikely friendships and relationships with her German captors (including an army veterinarian with his own secret and a deaf farmhand), the stakes in Her War are high, both in combat and in what passes for everyday life

• Lilian Nattel weaves together the sections pre-1943, gleaned off of the slim established facts of Lily's life, and the sections after she's shot down, a completely invented fascinating survival story for Lily as a German prisoner

• For readers of Paula McLean's Circling the Sun and Kate Quinn's The Alice Network, from the bestselling author of Web of Angels and The River Midnight