Once Books in Order

The Once books follow one boy, Felix, across a lifetime, from a sheltered ten‑year‑old in wartime Poland to an old man still wrestling with what he has seen. The series is sometimes called the Felix and Zelda books, after the friendship at its heart.

It begins with Once, when Felix escapes a Catholic orphanage in 1942, convinced his Jewish parents are still alive and need to be warned about the Nazis. On the road he meets Zelda, a younger girl with her own hidden losses. Through Felix’s hopeful, often naïve voice, readers see ghettos, trains and violence without the story ever losing sight of small acts of kindness.

Then continues their flight through Nazi‑occupied Poland. The children are taken in by Genia, a sharp‑tongued farmer who doesn’t like Jews but hates people who hurt kids even more. Felix slowly learns how much danger they’re all in, and how risky it is for anyone to help them.

In After and Soon the war grinds on and then ends, but safety doesn’t arrive on schedule. Felix, now a teenager, finds himself hiding in barns, working with resistance fighters and trying to keep his humanity in a world where revenge and survival instincts run hot. Postwar Poland is shown as hungry, ruined and dangerous, with new authorities and old hatreds.

The story then follows Felix beyond Europe. In Maybe he and Anya, a girl carrying her own trauma, fight for a chance to build a life in Australia. Now shifts to contemporary Australia and is told partly by Felix’s granddaughter, also called Zelda, as bushfire, bullying and buried memories drag the past into the present.

The final book, Always, finds Felix at eighty‑seven, living quietly as a retired surgeon until ten‑year‑old Wassim arrives from Eastern Europe asking for help against a violent fascist gang. Felix’s old experiences suddenly feel very current, and he must decide how much of himself he is willing to risk again.

Across the whole sequence, the books stay close to a child’s point of view even when the events are brutal. They explore friendship, storytelling, loyalty, faith and doubt, without pretending that everything works out neatly. This page gathers the series in both publication and chronological order, with short summaries and background to help you decide whether to read straight through or dip into particular stages of Felix’s life.