1. Murphy begins and ends her true fairy tale with the words of the wise witch Magda, who is the children's savior. She's an outsider from the village of Piaski, with Gypsy heritage, but she's also a relative to many characters: an aunt, a sister, and a surrogate mother to the children. How is she a traditional witch? What abilities mark her as such? How does she display her unconventional morals when considering the affairs of others? Why does Murphy make her a kind of narrator?

2. The primeval forest of Bialowieza is itself a character in this novel. It's a place that is harsh and wild but that offers protection to the children, to Magda, and to the Partisans as they work to oust the Germans. How does the forest enhance the fairy-tale sensibility? Does the forest have a personality; and if so, how would you describe it?

3. The forest is filled with wild beasts: the wild ponies, the elusive bison, the mad boar. Think back to some of the encounters characters have with these animals. How do wild animals function as symbols in the story? How do they connect characters? Do they serve as indicators of change at certain crucial moments in the plot?

4. Nelka and Telek are the romantic center of the novel. Each is forced to undertake harrowing actions in order to protect their families and the villagers. Telek in particular is forced to inflict harm in order to prevent an even greater wrong. What do these sacrifices bring them? How do you think they are able to endure these horrors and still imagine a future for themselves as lovers?

5. The stepmother is not a traditional fairy-tale stepmother; she is portrayed very positively, as an independent woman and a brave guardian of Hansel and Gretel's father. She does, however, make some excruciating decisions for the Mechanik and his children, decisions that have major consequences for them all. Consider different points in the story when she is forced to make painful choices; do you agree with those choices? Could she have acted differently? Do you think her fate—she is, after all, the stepmother—is a necessity of the fairy-tale genre?

6. At the start of novel, the children are given new names by the stepmother; they will struggle after a while to remember their original ones. Other characters receive new names too: the father becomes the Mechanik, the stepmother the White Wolf. The father notes that "His name had disappeared with the war"; what does this loss of names symbolize? Why do so many of the Partisans go by aliases? Why do you think Murphy chose not to reveal everyone's "real" names?

7. Memory is a key theme, especially for Gretel. At the start of the novel, she is already complaining that time in the ghetto has marred her memories of life before the war. By the end, those memories become key to her emotional well-being. What does it mean for her to lose and/or retain memories of a home before the trauma? How does memory serve the children during their quest to stay alive and find their father? Do you think Murphy implies there is a symbolic or real relationship between people and memory?

8. In many ways, this novel details a fairy-tale world, one with magical animals, the true love of Nelka and Telek, and a woman known as a witch. A traumatized Gretel spends part of the novel in the realm of madness, and for her it ultimately becomes important that she leave behind her immersion in fantasy and face reality. Hansel, too, has to give up playing war and lead his sister in a very real struggle for survival. Do you think that Murphy is suggesting that too much belief in fantasy can be an obstacle to maturity or to finding resolution? Or do you think that she shows how belief—in fairy tales, magic, and beauty—can help us overcome trials? Will Gretel continue to be an unusual child, or do you imagine her as more ordinary—more normal—as we leave her at the end of the book?

9. Both religion and magic infuse this story. There are scenes of Father Piotr's agony over his fallen priesthood, Hansel's folk cure for Gretel when she has the grippe, and Gretel holding a personal Shabbas. Often traditional church-centered worship and a more female-oriented magic or paganism have been in conflict in Europe and America; here it seems that a more immediate experience of evil erodes that conflict, at least for some of the central characters. How does this story allow church and magic to coexist? What does this say about the nature of spirituality for some of the characters?

10. On the other hand, the Partisans are distinctly antireligious; they dream of a godless communism to supplant the bloody passions of a world they view as too irrational. The father became an assimilated, nonreligious Jew, and throughout the book he struggles with his own inability to believe in God. At the same time he is trying with all his might to believe, against all logic, that his children will survive. How did the ending resolve this conflict in him, or did it? And what is Murphy suggesting about the place of religion in an ethical society, whether it be postwar revolutionary communist, or family-based? What place do you think religion will—or should—have for the main characters in their new lives?

11. The village of Piaski is populated by many types of people: there are ordinary Polish citizens, collaborators, and secret revolutionaries, alongside Nazis and their imported workers. Though there are, as one character notes, "so many reasons to hate the war," many of the villagers seem to be trying to simply endure the world of devastation that is closing in on their small town in the hopes that the war will end before they have to make greater sacrifices. Who in the town did you sympathize with? Try to recall villagers you would characterize as collaborators. Were their actions understandable to you? What about Hansel's childish admiration for the Nazis? What might you have done in a similar situation?

12. The end of the novel brings satisfaction for some, but doesn't avoid the real consequences of the war on the lives of these characters; all of them face futures that are radically altered from anything they have known before. Which characters do you think achieved redemption? Who got what they deserved? What do you think the future will be like for Hansel and Gretel? For the people of Piaski?