Call Across the Sea

Call Across the Sea , the fourth novel in Kathy Kacer’s “Heroes Quartet” series, presents another everyday European notable for coming to the aid of Jewish people during the Nazi period. Henny Sinding, a young Danish woman who loves sailing, was actually 22-years-old in 1943, though she’s depicted as 16 in the novel. Her father, a Danish naval officer and head of the Danish Lighthouse and Buoy Service, taught her to sail at an early age.

As the novel opens in the summer of 1943, Henny is at the wheel of her Far’s [Dad’s] boat, the Gerda III, making a supply run to the Drogden Lighthouse. She, Far, and the two crew members, Otto and Gerhardt, are alarmed to see a small boat flying the Nazi flag.

The author explains that when Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, the Danish government surrendered in return for being allowed to keep its government and head of state, King Christian X. By 1943, however, there was an increased Nazi presence in Copenhagen and throughout the country. One of Otto’s friends had his apartment searched by the Nazis. At the lighthouse, Far learns that the Nazi police have interrogated the lighthouse keepers and hinted that they might set up a command post there. The Nazis have outlawed strikes and public assemblies. Action against them is punishable by death.

Back home in Copenhagen, as Henny mulls over the situation, her 10-year-old neighbour, Susanne Rubin, drops into her yard to chat. Henny babysat Susanne and sometimes takes her sailing. In the next chapter, readers meet Henny’s schoolmates: the identical twins, Emma and Sophia, and a handsome youth named Lukas. Lukas’s school bag falls open to reveal a flyer showing a Nazi swastika blacked out with a thick X.

Having established a tense situation, the author follows through with a suspenseful, edge-of-the-chair novel showing Henny’s Resistance activities, her efforts to keep them from her parents, and her awareness of ever-present danger. While an adult reader can anticipate many of the developments, a middle grade reader would not. The climax is Henny’s voyage from Copenhagen across the Kattigat Channel to neutral Sweden, with the Rubin family and four other Jewish citizens hidden in the hold of the Gerda III.

The author’s decision to make Henny 16, not 22, may have been an attempt to bring the heroine closer to the 9-12 age group so that young readers would identify with her. The presence of 10-year-old Susanne Rubin may have been an added attempt to have a character to whom middle grader readers can relate. Susanne’s role is minor, though; the story is presented through Henny’s heart and mind, not hers. Other approaches might have worked better; for instance, the creation of a younger sibling for Henny who is her confidante and knows all about her adventures. Or the author could have written a novel for a more mature audience, centering on Henny at the age she actually was in 1943.

Bringing identical twins into the story leads the reader to expect intriguing situations to follow. Will they trick the Nazis into thinking there is one girl in the Resistance who seems to be in two places at once? These possibilities are not developed.

Since young Canadian readers are unlikely to know much about European geography, it would have been helpful if a map had been included, one showing Denmark in relation to Germany and Sweden.

Henny Sinding saved around three hundred Danish Jews by taking them to neutral Sweden. Other boat owners saved lives too. The author notes that, of the approximately 8,000 Jews in Denmark during the war, over 7,700 were saved. Henny continued in the Resistance but eventually fled to Sweden to escape arrest. There she married, continued to race sailboats, and died in 2009. Her father’s boat, the Gerda III, is now on display in the Seaport Museum of Mystic, Connecticut. Kudos to Kacer for bringing to light another courageous person who saved Jews during the Holocaust.