A Review of the Novel: Palaces of the Crow

by Bruce Radtke

The people of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Iran share one goal in the midst of the violent destruction they are experiencing: survival.

In this book, four young people, in Lithuania during World War II, also struggled to survive, and in a novel written by Ray Nayler called Palaces of the Crow we get to see and admire their efforts.  Amazingly, crows help them survive by warning and guiding.

A young Jewish nurse, a Roma illiterate girl, a Polish Red Army recruit and a boy traumatized and unable to speak — these four banded together to try to survive in a forest, surrounded by bands of Nazis searching for refugees, also by Red Army forces, by partisans, by unknown foes in the night.

Commenting on people at war, the author said, “These were people who seemed so happy, once the war had started, to see civilization peeled away.  There were people who shed civilization like reptiles shed an old skin.  People who leaped into violence gleefully.”  That familiar theme is a contrast to the concern the four youth felt for each other in this speculative novel — “a red thread of mutual care.” 

Have you considered mutual care as a way to survive?  Have you ever thought of crows as helpers in the struggle to survive?