Teen spy hunts her Nazi dad in twisty, violent thriller.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 16+?
Any Positive Content?
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Bluebird is a dark, atrocity-intensive thriller by Sharon Cameron (The Light in Hidden Places, The Dark Unwinding), set in the waning days of World War II and the early postwar era in New York. Its 18-year-old protagonist's central dilemma as she searches out her Nazi war criminal father is whether to let any of the various governments who want him (in theory to put him on trial, but in reality to put him to work for their own military advantage), have him, or to kill him herself. The much-sought-after knowledge involves his work using mind control to turn unwitting people into puppets who will perform a particular action (like killing somebody) and have no recollection of having done it. A teen girl is raped by Russian soldiers during the fall of Germany, and traumatized into a childlike state. A recurring flashback scene involves a small child being ordered by her father to crush a small bird to death to prove her love for him. Murder, torture, violent death, lots of spies and intrigue. Set against this darkness are assorted people, mostly Quakers, who take in refugees and help them find new lives, and also are relentless in their kindness. Along the way, the protagonist grapples with the frequent realization that everything she thinks she knows -- including who she really is -- is wrong. There's a bit of drinking, and cigarettes play an important role in several scenes. There are also a few intense kisses as love complicates things.
Violence & Scariness
a lot
A recurring image involves a character remembering being ordered, as a small child, to crush a frightened bird in her hand to prove her love and obedience to her father; dead birds appear in unexpected places throughout. Violence is pervasive and unescapable, from Nazi wartime atrocities of murder, torture, family separation, kidnapping, and sinister medical and mind-control experiments, to the quest for vengeance they inspire in many characters. A teen girl is raped by Russian soldiers who have killed her family, causing her to revert to a childlike, helpless mental state. Multiple mentions of a Nazi program under which German teen girls with suitable looks and pedigrees were matched for sex with SS officers to produce babies for Hitler. A Nazi woman murders her children and their nanny, then kills herself when Hitler falls. A teen character discovers that her revered father is actually killing and torturing people in a concentration camp, and is confronted by his surviving victims. Mortal combat with guns, knives, chunks of concrete, and more. A character commits suicide by cyanide pill. Spies kill other spies. Threats of death and harm to loved ones are often used to coerce characters. And it's not just the Nazis -- a young American man who was a conscientious objector during the war was infected with disease as part of a forced medical experiment by the U.S. government.
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Lots of romantic tension, and several intense kisses. A teen girl talks about letting the family chauffeur kiss her in return for driving lessons. The protagonist pretends to flirt with the Nazi who's captured her and her boyfriend -- to give the boyfriend a chance to stab the Nazi and save them. A teen girl is promised to a Nazi, perhaps for marriage, as a reward for services.
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A large, multiracial cast of supporting characters are connected to Powell House, a home run in 1940s by the American Friends Service Committee to help refugees find a new life in the U.S. following World War II. The Powell House program also worked against racism and other discrimination, both with advocacy and with social gatherings, lectures, arts events, and with its own employment practices. German characters view with interest how public attitudes about race are sometimes different, sometimes not so different in the U.S. -- for example, how a racially integrated nightclub would never have happened in Nazi Germany, but in the U.S. people sort themselves by race when lining up for a bus. A Black character shows great kindness to a vulnerable, mentally ill young woman, who turns on her. "Eva looks at the musicians -- all shades of black and brown -- blowing out their jazz. At Cherry in her cutaway shirt, threading her way through the tables and chairs like the lights are on. Nothing in this room would have been legal under Hitler except the coffee that hasn't come yet. She puts her gaze back on Jake and says, 'It isn't Wagner.'"
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Educational Value
a lot
Bluebird is fiction, but extensively researched and packed with detail about the varied experiences of living through World War II, the trauma, the loss, the atrocities, and the mundane struggles of everyday life. Music plays a strong role, from a character's fondness for "Clair de Lune" to the jazz clubs of New York. Some dialogue, including the occasional swear word, in German or Yiddish. In an extensive afterword, author Sharon Cameron gives more detail about her research into Nazi wartime atrocities, particularly secret "medical" and mind-control experiments conducted on prisoners in concentration camps, as well as eugenics (a racist doctrine adopted by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups) and "pure blood" campaigns. Also, how many of the perpetrators, instead of being brought to justice, were put to work by the Allied victors hoping to take military advantage of what the Nazi scientists knew.
Positive Role Models
some
Central character Eva is dealing in real time with being plunged suddenly into a world (1946 New York) that violates everything she's ever been taught in her previous life (in Nazi Germany). All the while she's doing whatever it takes to protect her lifelong BFF Annemarie, who's now helpless, childlike, and sometimes violent after being raped by Russian soldiers as Germany fell -- for which Eva blames herself -- Including making what she calls a "rotten deal," which she intends to break, with U.S. intelligence. Love interest Jake, a young Jewish man in New York who's lost family in the Holocaust, is assigned to look out for Eva by the relief agency, takes her to integrated jazz clubs and shows kindness to Annemarie. A large, multiracial cast of supporting characters connected to Powell House help refugees find a new life in the U.S. following World War II.
Positive Messages
a little
Bluebird is ethically complex, focused intensely on atrocities and the appropriate response to them. Strong messages of love, friendship, kindness, and doing the right thing for your loved ones -- along with a clear realization that in real life, no good deed goes unpunished, or so it often seems. People who work against racism and racist thinking are important to the story, as is Quaker pacifism. Much examination of spies and military use of horrific technology in the latest variation on "the war to end all wars" -- and whether it's OK for the "good guys" to commit atrocities to prevent the "bad guys" from committing atrocities.
Taking its name from a real-life, top-secret drugs-and-mind-control project of the CIA, BLUEBIRD is the name of a dark research program, a recurring reference to a young character being ordered to crush a bird to death and to the dead birds that crop up throughout the story, and also the code name given by her spymaster to 18-year-old Eva, as she's currently calling herself. It's 1946 and she's recently arrived in New York from Germany, thanks to what amounts to a deal with the devil -- the U.S. government wants her to find her father, a vanished Nazi war criminal, not so they can prosecute him but so they can put his mind-control experiments to work for their own ends. Eva, having led a sheltered life of Nazi privilege before the fall of the Third Reich, is grappling with the fact that her revered father is actually a monster who tortures people; she's also trying to protect her lifelong BFF Annemarie, who's been mentally impaired and sometimes violent since being raped by Russian soldiers at the end of the war. Taken in by good-hearted Quakers in New York, pursued by spies of various nationalities, and unexpectedly falling in love, she keeps a lot of secrets, including her plan to kill her father rather than turn him over if she finds him.
Plots, relationships, and realities twist nonstop in Sharon Cameron's post-World War II thriller, as an 18-year-old former Nazi princess is plunged into espionage by her American captor/benefactors. Amid rape, murder, torture, and other wartime atrocities, Bluebird pits relentless darkness and treachery against defiant, equally relentless kindness as a backdrop to Eva's moral struggles in impossible situations. Extremely well researched, with much relevant and often horrific history in the afterword, it's sometimes a bit of a pile-on as Cameron tries to pack it all into the story.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about spy stories like Bluebird. Why do you think this is such a popular genre? What other stories do you know that involve espionage? What drives characters to engage in it?
Being a spy involves lying to people on a nonstop basis. What would you consider a good enough reason to engage in behavior you normally know is wrong?
What do you think of the violence in Bluebird? Is it essential to the historically based story? Is it hard to read? Is seeing it on the page more tolerable than seeing it in a movie or TV show? Why or why not?
Available on
:
Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
Last updated
:
September 29, 2025
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