Must read 🏆 A masterful tale of love, conflict, and revenge depicting a young man's journey to adulthood in war torn Central Europe.

The Days Before Tomorrow follows a young Ukrainian Jewish boy’s journey to adulthood from the interwar years through Hitler’s rise to power. Along with his sister Leja, young Wolchi confronts the scourge of antisemitism in that part of Central Europe historian Timothy Snyder termed the “Bloodlands.” 

As Wolchi grows, he uncovers a secret that threatens to tear his family apart and serves as his introduction to the imbalance of power in human affairs.

 Working for his printer father, he gains mechanical skills that he hones in pre-war Krakow. There, he meets his first love and learns sad truths about the fickleness of emotional involvement.

As war spreads across Europe, Wolchi’s life is tossed from one great power to another. The skills he has acquired, however, serve him well as he is shipped to a wartime factory deep in the Soviet Union. 

This story is told against a backdrop of family love and betrayal, first love and abandonment, and always the hostility between masters and their subjects. The author depicts not just the evil of antisemitism, but the frequent acts of kindness of those bound by a common fate. He does this with a masterful hand, exposing humanity and inhumanity with fully realized actors. 

The descriptions are evocative. You feel the cold of winter, the rush of a winter, and the dank interior of a mine. Like Anthony Doerr's portrayal of clocks and radios in All the Light We Cannot See, the author’s descriptions of an old printing press are vivid and detailed.

The conclusion is satisfying, producing a climax the reader has longed for and a resolution that harkens back to the opening pages of the story.

The best historical fiction not only tells a good story well, but teaches readers something new, demanding that they learn more. Mark Hass does both in this well crafted tale of love, conflict, and revenge. 

— Reviewed on Reedsy Discovery, by Jim Lewis, author of Novak's Quest.

The story is from long ago, yet it feels like it's personal, as if the author knew these people well and cared for them deeply.

Mark Hass's story focuses on a family in Eastern Europe in the mid-Twentieth Century, but its themes are deeply resonant today. Anyone who reads "The Days Before Tomorrow" will come away with a greater understanding of the current war in Ukraine, the continuing scourge of antisemitism, and the senseless bullying of ethnic minorities. They will also appreciate the endurance of the human spirit, and its ability to rise against all odds and over all obstacles to find love and peace in a tumultuous world.

 Mark displays an impressive eye for detail, a faithfulness to history, and a knack for using small stories and fictional characters to bring larger issues and real historical figures to life. The story is from long ago, yet it feels like it's personal, as if the author knew these people well and cared for them deeply. Perhaps, in a way, he did.

 Watch for cameo appearances by notable people. There's a particularly interesting passage about an earnest young Pole, Karol Wojtyla, whom you will know by another name he acquired later in life. 

— Reviewed by Jon Pepper, author of the Fossil Feuds series and Missy's Twitch

An often riveting work of historical fiction.

The Days Before Tomorrow is set in Western Ukraine in the years spanning the period between WWI and WWII. Hass centers the story on both the personal struggles of siblings Wolchi and Leja as well as the broader conflicts unfolding in their communities and the world at-large. 

Sidestepping the tradition of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis, The Days Before Tomorrow shows a different side of resistance and coping that is less often seen in WWII stories.

The stars of the story are Wolchi and Leja, the brother and sister who survive to the end but have very different stories—his, the path of working in factories, hers, that of a guerrilla resistance fighter. They are both well-drawn, as are their parents and homelife, and the author provides them with an emotionally satisfying ending. 

— Reviewed by The BookLife Prize

A Memorable Tale . . . Readers will be moved

Hass debuts with a memorable tale of discrimination and hardship faced by a young Jewish man in pre-WWII eastern Poland. In 1933, teenager Wolchi lives with his parents, brother, and sister in a small town in Galicia, where his father works as a bookbinder and printer. Their financial stability is upended when wealthy neighbor Igor Goreki stops the government from using Wolchi’s father as its printer after Igor’s son, Nicholas, is injured while taking part in an antisemitic attack on Wolchi’s family. Determined to fight back against the escalating violence, Wolchi and his sister, Leja, speak out against the town’s antisemitic persecutors. Then, after rising tensions with the Gorekis end in more brutality, they’re forced to flee to Krakow. When the Germans take control of the city, Wolchi and Leja return to their now Russian-ruled town, where more tragedies ensue. As the plot unfolds, Hass documents the gradual erosion of Wolchi’s family’s rights in fine-grained detail, showing how they’re uprooted by the German and Russian occupations alike. Readers will be moved by this story of a never-ending struggle for survival.

— Reviewed by Publishers Weekly