Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

Summer of my German Soldier is largely autobiographical, though Bette Greene spent 40 years denying it. (It lost to Eleanor Cameron’s supernatural mystery The Court of the Stone Children.)Īccording to Greene’s obituary in The Washington Post, the first paperback printing sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Dial was richly rewarded for its faith in Greene’s debut novel Summer of My German Soldier was published to widespread critical acclaim in 1973 and became a finalist for a 1974 National Book Award. Summer of my German Soldier struggled to find a publisher.Īccording to Publishers Weekly, Summer of My German Soldier was rejected by 18 publishers before it was finally accepted by Dial Press, a respected house whose catalogue included titles by James Baldwin and Norman Mailer. It took her half a decade to complete the manuscript. Greene kept honing her writing skills during and after college, working as a journalist and a public information officer, but it wasn’t until after the birth of her daughter that she tried her hand at writing fiction.

It took Bette Green five years to write Summer of my German Soldier.Īfter graduating high school in 1952, Greene studied abroad in France and attended several universities, including Columbia in New York, before marrying a neurologist in 1959 and settling near Boston. Greene would go on to write for the paper while she was a student at Memphis State University before eventually joining the staff as a reporter. When she was only 9 years old, Greene wrote an eyewitness account of a fire at a local dairy farm and sent the article to the Memphis daily newspaper The Commercial Appeal, which reportedly purchased the story for 18 cents (about $2.75 in today’s market). Greene was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but spent her early childhood about 35 miles west in Parkin, Arkansas, where her parents owned and operated a general store called Evensky’s Dry Goods.

Author Bette Green claimed to have sold her first story when she was 9 years old. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a new reader, here are a few things you might not know about the book and its outspoken author. Greene’s 1973 debut novel, about a 12-year-old Jewish girl in rural Arkansas who befriends a German prisoner of war in the early 1940s, was embraced by critics and readers alike, and it’s still a mainstay on school reading lists. The 1970s are considered a golden age for young adult literature, and Bette Greene’s Summer of My German Soldier remains one of the decade’s defining YA classics.

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene