From the New
York Times bestselling author
of The Lost Girls of Paris comes a riveting tale of courage and unlikely
friendship during World War II.
1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents in the
Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie
and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous tunnels
beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about
her own age buying flowers.
Ella
Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her
stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. While
on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a
grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.
Ella begins
to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen,
their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of
overwhelming odds. Inspired by incredible true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is
an unforgettable testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary
strength of the human will to survive.
Buy Links
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | IndieBound
Libro.fm | Books-A-Million | Target | Walmart
Indigo | kobo | AppleBooks | Google Play
Kraków, Poland
June 2016
The woman I see before me is not the one I expected at
all.
Ten minutes earlier, I stood before the mirror in my hotel
room, brushing some lint from the cuff of my pale blue blouse, adjusting a
pearl earring. Distaste rose inside me. I had become the poster child for a
woman in her early seventies—graying hair cut short and practical, pantsuit
hugging my sturdy frame more snugly than it would have a year ago.
I patted the bouquet of fresh flowers on the nightstand,
bright red blooms wrapped in crisp brown paper. Then I walked to the window.
Hotel Wentzl, a converted sixteenth-century mansion, sat on the southwest corner
of the Rynek, Kraków’s immense town square. I chose the location deliberately,
made sure my room had just the right view. The square, with its concave
southern corner giving it rather the appearance of a sieve, bustled with
activity. Tourists thronged between the churches and the souvenir stalls of the
Sukiennice, the massive, oblong cloth hall that
bisected the square. Friends gathered at the outdoor cafés for an after-work
drink on a warm June evening, while commuters hurried home with their parcels,
eyes cast toward the clouds darkening over Wawel Castle to the south.
I had been to Kraków twice
before, once right after communism fell and then again ten years later when I
started my search in earnest. I was immediately won over by the hidden gem of a
city. Though eclipsed by the tourist magnets of Prague and Berlin, Kraków’s Old
Town, with its unscarred cathedrals and stone-carved houses restored to the
original, was one of the most elegant in all of Europe.
The city changed so much each
time I came, everything brighter and newer—”better” in the eyes of the locals,
who had gone through many years of hardship and stalled progress. The once-gray
houses had been painted vibrant yellows and blues, turning the ancient streets
into a movie-set version of themselves. The locals were a study in
contradictions, too: fashionably dressed young people talked on their cell
phones as they walked, heedless of the mountain villagers selling wool sweaters
and sheep’s cheese from tarps laid on the ground, and a scarf-clad babcia who
sat on the pavement, begging for coins. Under a store window touting wi-fi and
internet plans, pigeons pecked at the hard cobblestones of the market square as
they had for centuries. Beneath all of the modernity and polish, the baroque
architecture of the Old Town shone defiantly through, a history that would not
be denied.
But it was not history that
brought me here—or at least not that history.
As the trumpeter in the
Mariacki Church tower began to play the Hejnał, signaling the top of the hour,
I studied the northwest corner of the square, waiting for the woman to appear
at five as she had every day. I did not see her and I wondered if she might not
come today, in which case my trip halfway around the world would have been in
vain. The first day, I wanted to make sure she was the right person. The
second, I meant to speak with her but lost my nerve. Tomorrow I would fly home
to America. This was my last chance.
Finally, she appeared from
around the corner of a pharmacy, umbrella tucked smartly under one arm. She
made her way across the square with surprising speed for a woman who was about
ninety. She was not stooped; her back was straight and tall. Her white hair was
pulled into a loose knot atop her head, but pieces had broken free and fanned
out wildly, framing her face. In contrast to my own staid clothing, she wore a
brightly colored skirt, its pattern vibrant. The shiny fabric seemed to dance
around her ankles by its own accord as she walked and I could almost hear its
rustling sound.
Her routine was familiar, the
same as the previous two days when I watched her walk to the Café Noworolski
and request the table farthest from the square, sheltered from the activity and
noise by the deep arched entranceway of the building. Last time I had come to
Kraków, I was still searching. Now I knew who she was and where to find her.
The only thing to do was to summon my courage and go down.
The woman took a seat at her
usual table in the corner, opened a newspaper. She had no idea that we were
about to meet—or even that I was alive.
From the distance came a
rumble of thunder. Drops began to fall then, splattering the cobblestones like
dark tears. I had to hurry. If the outdoor café closed and the woman left,
everything I came for would be gone.
I heard the voices of my
children, telling me that it was too dangerous to travel so far alone at my
age, that there was no reason, nothing more to be learned here. I should just
leave and go home. It would matter to no one.
Except to me—and to her. I
heard her voice in my mind as I imagined it to be, reminding me what it was
that I had come for.
Steeling myself, I picked up
the flowers and walked from the room.
Outside, I started across the
square. Then I stopped again. Doubts reverberated through my brain. Why had I
come all of this way? What was I looking for? Doggedly, I pressed onward, not
feeling the large drops that splattered my clothes and hair. I reached the
café, wound through the tables of patrons who were paying their checks and
preparing to leave as the rain fell heavier. As I neared the table, the woman
with the white hair lifted her gaze from the newspaper. Her eyes widened.
Up close now, I can see her
face. I can see everything. I stand motionless, struck frozen.
The woman I see before me is
not the one I expected at all.
Excerpted from The Woman With the Blue Star @ 2021 by Pam
Jenoff, used with permission by Park Row Books.
About the Author
Pam Jenoff is the author of several books of historical fiction, including the NYT bestseller The Orphan's Tale. She holds a degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a degree in history from Cambridge, and she received her JD from UPenn. Her novels are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She lives with her husband and 3 children near Philadelphia, where she teaches law.
Social Links:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Goodreads | Mailing List Sign Up
0 comments:
Post a Comment