We Bury Nothing by Kate Blair Ties Past to Present with Engaging Mystery
Reviewed by Melanie Marttila
Kate Blair is an award-winning young adult/middle grade author. Her first four novels were science fiction or fantasy. With We Bury Nothing, she’s turned her attention to historical fiction, highlighting a lesser-known aspect of Canada’s involvement in WWII. Did you know that Canada operated prison camps for 34,000 combatant German prisoners of war (POWs) during WWII? Before reading We Bury Nothing, I did not.
This engaging young adult mystery is written in dual timelines.
The first chapter, which may have worked better as a prologue (just saying), is from the point of view of George, a young guard at a German POW camp in the fictitious Canadian town of Westonville during WWII. In 1945, he discovers the body of Erich Stein, one of the prisoners in the camp, outside the fence. There’s no indication of how he escaped, only that a head wound was the likely cause of his death. George knows Erich and mourns the waste of another young life in a war that has taken millions.
From there, the first timeline tells Erich’s story, from the long, cross-Canada train ride to Camp 43 in 1943 to his untimely death in 1945. Initially determined to escape, Erich’s time in the camp causes him to question what he once believed about being “a good German.”
In the present day, Keira has come to Westonville as one of several high school graduates to work at the heritage site that Camp 43 has become. She meets her fellow summer students, Asha, Ephram, and Ruth who’ve submitted proposals for projects to work on over the summer all related to Camp 43.
At the welcoming reception, museum board chair and politician Peter Hopper announces that the student with the best project will win the Hopper Scholarship, which will pay for a full university degree. Keira’s project is to solve the 80-year-old mystery of Erich Stein’s death, and the scholarship is her only hope of attending university.
The other student projects all seem better than hers, though, and Keira doubts whether her investigation, and therefore she, is good enough. She struggles to find her place in the summer program and to make friends, until Ruth takes Keira under her extroverted wing.
When Ruth is found drowned after a local party, Keira finds herself trying to solve two mysteries. Other deaths, in the past and present complicate her search for answers and Keira doubts whether her project can be completed, let alone win the scholarship.
Then, Keira questions whether she wants to win the scholarship at all when, at the local library’s drag queen story time, she’s confronted with the Hoppers’ anti-2SLGBTQI+ sentiments. One of the other summer students, Asha, is queer, and she and Keira are caught in the right-wing protest turned violent when they show up to support the queens.
The clues come together in both timelines in an ingenious manner. In the past, Erich experiences the hostility of his fellow prisoners, is injured, and is assigned to work on a local farm. In the present, Keira makes a discovery dependent on those historical events. Erich’s experience combines with Keira’s insights to reveal a more complete story.
Eventually, Keira realizes the murders in the past and present are related. The realization hits when Asha unveils her project, which shares the novel’s title. Asha directly ties Nazi persecution to current fascist bigotry like the Hoppers’. The denouement is tragic, but ultimately empowering for Keira, who sheds her self-doubt and decides who she wants to be.
We Bury Nothing is a fascinating and well-written young adult mystery that sheds light on a little-known aspect of Canada during WWII and ties it to current right-wing extremism and persecution of marginalized communities.
About the Author
Kate Blair is an award-nominated author originally from Hayling Island, UK. She has been a finalist for the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award and the Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Snow Willow Award. Her novels Transferral and Tangled Planet were both longlisted for the Sunburst Award and Transferral was a Starred Selection of the Canadian Children's Book Centre’s Best Books for Kids and Teens. Blair currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
About the Reviewer
Melanie Marttila (she/her) is an #ActuallyAutistic SFF author-in-progress, writing poetry and tales of hope in the face of adversity. Her poetry has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Polar Starlight, Sulphur, and her debut poetry collection, The Art of Floating, was published in 2024 by Latitude 46. Her short fiction has appeared in Through the Portal, Pulp Literature, and On Spec. She is a settler writing in Sudbury, or ‘N’Swakamok, on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, home of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and the Wahnapitae First Nation, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her surname, with her spouse and their dog.
Book Details
Publisher : DCB Young Readers
Publication date : Oct. 4 2025
Language : English
Print length : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 177086802X
ISBN-13 : 978-1770868021
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