About this item
It's 1945, and the world is in the grip of war.Hideki lives with his family on the island of Okinawa, near Japan. When WWII crashes onto his shores, Hideki is drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps to fight for the Japanese army. He is handed a grenade and a set of instructions: Don't come back until you've killed an American soldier.Ray, a young American Marine, has just landed on Okinawa. This is Ray's first-ever battle, and he doesn't know what to expect -- or if he'll make it out alive. He just knows that the enemy is everywhere.Hideki and Ray each fight their way across the island, surviving heart-pounding ambushes and dangerous traps. But then the two of them collide in the middle of the battle...And choices they make in that single instant will change everything.
About the Author
Alan Gratz was born and raised in Knoxville, TN, home of the 1982 World's Fair. After a carefree but humid childhood, Alan attended the University of Tennessee, where he earned a College Scholars degree with a specialization in creative writing, and later, a Master's degree in English education. In addition to writing plays, magazine articles, and a few episodes of A&E's City Confidential, Alan has taught catapult-building to middle-schoolers, written more than 6,000 radio commercials, sold other people's books, lectured at a Czech university, and traveled the galaxy as a space ranger. (One of those is not true. ) Alan is the author of one of the ALA's 2007 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, Samurai Shortstop (Dial 2006) , and Something Rotten (Dial 2007) , a contemporary young adult murder mystery based on "Hamlet. " He is currently at work on a sequel, Something Wicked (Dial 2008) , and a middle-grade novel about family, baseball, and American history, called The Brooklyn Nine (Dial 2009) .Alan now lives with his wife Wendi and his daughter Jo in the high country of Western North Carolina, where he enjoys reading, eating pizza, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, watching baseball.
