The Night War is a work of historical fiction by best-selling author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Published in 2024, the novel is intended for middle grade readers. It details the harrowing experiences of Miriam “Miri” Schrieber, a German Jew living in Paris in 1942, who must disguise her true identity to survive. The novel won a Junior Library Guild selection award. Brubaker Bradley is also the author of The War That Saved My Life (2015), The War I Finally Won (2017), and Fighting Words (2020).

This guide refers to the e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death and religious discrimination. In particular, they discuss antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Plot Summary

The story opens in July 1942 with 12-year-old Miriam “Miri” Schrieber living in a small apartment with her mother and father in a crowded refugee suburb of Paris. Their neighbors, the Rosenbaums, are close friends of the family. Miri especially dotes on their young daughter, Nora, who is two years old. Monsieur Rosenbaum was arrested two years earlier. The families celebrate Shabbos together each week. Miri goes out to buy groceries, and her mother is thrilled with the beautiful tomato she managed to find because fresh produce is hard to come by in wartime France. Miri sadly remembers their lush garden attached to their home in Berlin, which they were forced to flee after Kristallnacht in 1938.

A few days later, Miri returns home and is shocked and terrified to see French police, who are usually courteous and polite to her, raiding the apartment building. She cannot find her mother (her father has gone into hiding, thinking that only he would be targeted in a roundup), and she is shoved onto a bus with Madame Rosenbaum and Nora. They are taken to the vélodrome (an indoor stadium). Madame Rosenbaum removes Miri’s and Nora’s sweaters, which both bear the yellow stars that signify their status as Jews. Miri escapes under the bus with Nora.

A German soldier stops her on the other side of the street and asks for her papers. Fortunately, a nun interjects and says that Miri lives at the convent. Miri plays along. The nun, Sister Félicité, hides Miri and Nora in a small room in the convent. She organizes fake identity cards, cartité, for Nora and Miri, who adopts the fake name Marie Cadieux.

Miri and Nora are taken in the bed of a truck to an unknown location. Miri panics and becomes angry when she wakes up to find Nora gone. They are in the town of Chenonceaux. She is directed to a convent school, where she will live and pretend to be Marie, the daughter of communists. She meets Jacqueline and Beatrice, other girls who live at the convent over the summer. Jacqueline is a staunch Catholic, and Beatrice seems to be as well. Beatrice asks Miri several pointed questions.

Miri learns about Catholic prayers and practices. She mutters Hebrew prayers quietly to herself; Beatrice snaps at her that she’s not doing it right. On an excursion from the castle, the girls are taken to Château de Chenonceau, a local castle. Sister Dominique, a kind nun, urges Miri to pay attention and tells her that the Vichy—French-controlled France—is just on the other side of the river. The castle spans the river.

Sister Dominique breaks her leg. Sister Annunciata, a kind nun who smells of fish and therefore secretly gets called “Sister Anchovy” by the girls, confesses to Miri that Sister Dominique was supposed to smuggle some people to the Vichy that night. Miri volunteers to do it. She is helped by a lady dressed in all black, who helps Miri come up with a cover story when she is discovered on the castle grounds by Nazi soldiers. Miri tells them that she is there because the gardener is dead, which turns out to be correct, and the Nazi soldiers leave her in the care of Bette, the castle housekeeper.

Bette seems to know what Miri is doing but insists on not being told anything. Miri sneaks back out and finds the lady she is supposed to escort to the Vichy. They creep through the ballroom bridge, and Miri hands the lady off to another smuggler. Miri feels elated to have helped.

In the following days, Miri returns to the castle and meets the lady in black again. The lady explains that she wants Miri to be her gardener. Miri loves gardens and agrees, although she is more interested in the kitchen gardens than the flower garden the lady is talking about.

A few nights later, Miri escorts an injured airman through the castle. The next morning, the girls in the dormitory notice that Miri is covered in blood. Miri pretends that it is menstrual blood. Sister Annunciata helps her clean up, fretting that she’s endangering Miri’s life too much, but Miri continues to insist that she wants to help.

Miri sees Nora at church and learns that Nora lives with a local couple who believed Nora to be an orphan. Miri vows to escape with Nora toward Switzerland, where Madame Rosenbaum told her she had a cousin.

Miri continues to see the lady, who she discovers is the ghost of Catherine de’ Medici. Catherine and Miri tell each other about their lives and families. Meanwhile, Miri learns more details of Catherine’s life through Beatrice, who loves to read about history. Miri condemns Catherine for her role in a massacre that killed thousands of Huguenots. Catherine insists that she needed to retain power for her family; this was her responsibility.

Catherine is upset to learn about Miri’s plan to flee to Switzerland. She explains that, as a ghost, she is invisible to everyone except her respective gardeners. She wants Miri to remain to work on her garden, which has slid into disrepair since the war.

One night, Miri wakes up yelling in Yiddish. Elodie, a young girl in the convent dormitory, correctly identifies it as Yiddish and then looks scared. Beatrice quickly covers up the comment by saying that it is ridiculous to think that Miri could speak Yiddish. The other girls wonder if Miri is speaking in tongues.

Miri learns that Nora, now called Monique, is to be christened Catholic. Even though Nora is safe and happy where she is, Miri reflects that leaving her would be denying Nora a huge part of her identity and history. She vows to take her during the christening.

During the christening, Sister Annunciata faints dramatically across the priest, causing a confusing disturbance. Miri grabs Nora and runs. Beatrice announces that Nora and Miri are Jewish.

At the castle inn, Miri and Nora find Beatrice and Elodie, who are also Jewish and want to escape with them. Catherine, who concedes that she shouldn’t have taken part in the massacre of the Huguenots, agrees to help the girls escape; she calls to Miri when there is a break in the guards, and the girls run through the castle bridge to freedom.

Miri and Nora are later reunited with their families in Switzerland after the war, but Beatrice’s and Elodie’s families do not survive.