An Invisible Girl in Nazi Germany, and the Friend She Refuses to Abandon

Imagine being a child in Nazi Germany, watching your world grow darker by the day. Friends disappear. Families are torn apart. Fear becomes part of every moment.

Now imagine that, one day, you vanish. Not in the terrible way so many did, but literally. You become invisible.

That's the extraordinary premise of The Vanishing, David Michael Slater's genre-defying novel. To save her best friend from the horrors of Nazi Germany, an invisible girl embarks on a perilous journey of redemption and revenge. The result is a story that is fierce and loving, devastating and compelling, a breathtaking blend of history, fiction, and magical realism.

Magical realism is a literary tradition in which fantastical elements appear within an otherwise realistic world, and are treated almost matter-of-factly. It's most closely associated with Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez, but authors around the world have used it to explore history and trauma in powerful ways. There's a reason it works so well for subjects like the Holocaust. Some realities are so horrifying that ordinary storytelling can struggle to hold them. A touch of the impossible can open a new door, letting readers approach unbearable history from a different angle and feel its weight in a new way.

That's exactly what Slater achieves. The girl's invisibility is both a gift and a curse. It allows her to move through a world designed to hunt her down, but it also isolates her in unimaginable ways. Through her eyes, readers witness the brutality of the era, and the courage it takes to act for someone else when the entire world has turned threatening. At the heart of the story is a friendship, and the lengths a young person will go to protect the person she loves.

The book has earned powerful praise from respected voices. Steve Stern, the National Jewish Book Award-winning author of The Frozen Rabbi, called it "a remarkable book." Mark A. Cooper, author of the Edelweiss Pirates series, wrote that it deserves a place among some of the greatest literature written about the Holocaust. And author Felice Cohen said it "took my breath away and held it until the very last page."

Slater has spoken about his hope for the book: that it might reach readers who would otherwise never pick up a book about the Holocaust, and set them on the path to learning what happened not so long ago. That goal matters. As the generation of Holocaust survivors grows smaller each year, the work of remembering, and of helping new generations understand, increasingly falls to educators, writers, and storytellers. Fiction can play a vital role, sparking curiosity and empathy that lead readers to histories, memoirs, and testimonies. A gripping novel can be the first step toward a lifelong understanding.

David Michael Slater is the author of nearly thirty works of fiction and nonfiction for children, teens, and adults, several of which have been in development for television and film. He teaches in Reno, Nevada. His other books with Library Tales Publishing include the 1980s family novel Fun & Games, the multigenerational saga UGLY, and the picture book Hanukkah Harvie vs. Santa Claus.

The Vanishing is a must-read for fans of historical fiction and magical realism, for older teens and adults exploring the history of the Holocaust, and for book clubs and classrooms looking for a novel that sparks deep conversation. It's a story that leaves readers, as one reviewer put it, both crying and smiling.

The Vanishing by David Michael Slater is available now in paperback and hardcover.