Shelly Sanders's "The Night Sparrow"

Shelly Sanders is the bestselling author of the adult novel Daughters of the Occupation and the acclaimed young adult historical novels The Rachel Trilogy. She began her writing career as a freelance journalist working for major publications, including the Toronto Star, National Post, Maclean’s, Canadian Living, Reader’s Digest, and Today’s Parent. She lives in Ontario.

Here Sanders dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Night Sparrow:

The Night Sparrow opens just before dawn in Seelow, Germany, with Elena Bruskina lying on her stomach, “finger poised on the trigger of her rifle though she couldn’t see her own hand in the chilly darkness.” It’s April, 1945, and Elena, a university student before the war, has trekked thousands of miles from her home in Minsk, Belarus, as a Red Army sniper. She’s seeking vengeance, after the Nazis brutally murdered her family in the Minsk ghetto, but revenge by bullets is not as simple or as satisfying as she’d anticipated. When she’s injured and re-deployed as an interpreter, she finds herself on a hunt for the most dangerous Nazi of all—Hitler—and sees that retaliation comes in many forms.

If The Night Sparrow were made into a movie, Shira Haas would be my first choice as Elena, with her breadth as an actor. Her performance as Esther in Unorthodox was spectacular and riveting. The role of Elena is demanding, with its broad emotional scope from ghetto prisoner, to escapee, to partisan, to sniper, to interrogator. As well, Shira, like Elena, is young and she’s Jewish. With the current wave of antisemitism, having a non-Jew in such a pivotal role feels wrong and insensitive.

For Elena’s love interest, Major Purkayev, Joseph Quinn, with pivotal roles in A Quiet Place and Gladiator II would be an excellent choice. He has just the right combination of tough guy spirit and boy-next-door likeability that Elena is drawn to from their first meeting.

The director I would choose, without hesitation, would be Ellen Kuras who directed Lee, the 2023 film starring Kate Winslet, about a WWII—era photojournalist determined to capture real images of war, even if it means putting herself in great danger. Under Kuras’ direction, Lee was a compelling film that poignantly revealed the limitations American women faced, along with the up-front brutality of war from a woman’s point of view.

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The Page 69 Test: The Night Sparrow.

Q&A with Shelly Sanders.

--Marshal Zeringue