The Woman with the Blue Star
Pam Jenoff
On Sale Date: May 4, 2021
9780778389385, 0778389383
Trade
Paperback
$17.99 USD, $22.99 CAD
Fiction
/ Historical / Jewish
336
pages
About the Book:
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.
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Excerpt Teaser (Prologue):
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: https://www.pamjenoff.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PamJenoffauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PamJenoff
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamjenoff/
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/213562.Pam_Jenoff
Mailing List: https://pamjenoff.com/mailing-list/
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