Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel -- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

In November 1938, young Ruth Block is a Jewish girl in Frankfurt Germany, trying to cope with the ever tightening noose of Nazi oppression; her father's stationery store has been shut down, and her school closed; then one night her family's apartment is broken into, and her father is dragged out, arrested, and taken to a concentration camp--and it becomes clear that if Ruth and her best friend Miriam are going to survive they must somehow get out...