Farewell Sidonia

Austrian author Hackl ( Aurora's Motive ) unfolds this absorbing, fact-based tale in terse, controlled prose. In 1933, the year the Nazis come to power, a dark-skinned infant girl is left wrapped in rags on the hospital steps in Steyr, Austria, her name, Sidonia Adlersburg, written on a scrap of paper beside her. Her mother is found to be an unwed gypsy, thus a member of a group that within the decade will be rounded up as ``foreign vermin.'' Sidonia is adopted by Hans Breirather, a laborer once jailed as a Social Democrat, and his wife, Josepha. Determined, brave and independent, the Breirathers weather the terrible Nazi years of political persecution and spying neighbors, defending Sidonia against detractors who call her ``that black thing.'' Finally, two officious social workers, acting ``in the child's best interest,'' place Sidonia in housing arranged for gypsies. The child's surveillance by the Youth Welfare Office and the Magistrate's Office, the pains taken by a schoolmaster to record her tiny faults and the plight of the gypsies are rendered here in wrenching detail. (Jan.)