In The Forest of Vanishing Stars, persecuted Jews in Eastern Europe take shelter in the Naliboki Forest, located west of Minsk in contemporary Belarus. The area, then known as Byelorussia, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 at the same time as Germany invaded Poland as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that established a non-aggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, and detailed how Finland, Poland, Romania and the Baltic states would be divided between them. In June 1941, Germany broke the treaty and invaded the western territories of the Soviet Union including Byelorussia (i.e. the Eastern Front, from the European perspective). It held the region until the USSR took back control in August 1944.

In crafting this fascinating historical novel, Kristin Harmel drew on real-life stories including that of the Bielski brothers, who grew a small army of resistance fighters and protected Jews who had fled from the surrounding areas seeking safety from the Nazis. The...