The Blood Years is my first work of historical fiction. And it’s more than that: It’s also what I’ve made of the stories my Nana shared with me about being a Jewish teenager in Czernowitz, Romania, during WWII and the Holocaust. Though she told me many things, and I knew there was a story to write, in order to craft a novel I had to do deep research into the complex and unique history of her particular region, other survivors’ narratives, creative work produced by those survivors, scholarly works about the events that transpired in and around Czernowitz, Romania, and much, much more.

Imagine that someone gives you a precious plate, and it shatters. Now imagine dropping that plate into the shards of six million shattered plates, some radically different from your plate, some nearly identical. Can you ever put the plate you were given together again? Most likely, no. But what you can do is sift gently and delicately and reverently through the shards, finding as many of the pieces of your plate as you can, and collecting other sharp-edged, beautiful, terrible pieces as well. And then you can take all these pieces and sit with them for many years, and then do your very best to make something with them — a mosaic. A piece of art that honors the original plate, even if it cannot be salvaged, that finds a way to make art from so many broken, priceless things. That’s what writing this book felt like. It’s my Nana’s story, but it’s not hers alone. It’s also a tribute to the other Czernowitzers who endured the Holocaust, and the pogroms before — and to all those who perished.

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The Blood Years is a love story about sisters. It’s about ballet, and bears, and the ways our families can fail us. It’s a book about the great and terrible things people do in the name of love. And it’s my attempt to do with my Nana’s gift of stories what I try to do with all my work — to transform pain into art, to embrace ambiguity, and to find beauty even in the ugliest of moments.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2024 BGHB Fiction winners.]

I want to thank the committee for honoring The Blood Years. I also want to thank the team at Balzer + Bray — and now, at Clarion — especially my editor, Jordan Brown, who shepherded this story across many years and through many drafts. Additionally, I’ve been fortunate to have the career guidance of Rubin Pfeffer and Sara Crowe, both incredible agents and human beings. Many friends and family members read drafts of The Blood Years and offered me insights and help. I am grateful to all of them, especially Laurel Snyder, who was essential in helping me wrestle with this story as well as with larger questions about identity and belonging.

Congratulations to my fellow honorees and the winners, and my deepest gratitude and respect to the librarians, the book lovers, the teachers, and the storytellers. All of us, together, build the world, with love.

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2024 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB24.