The Woman with the Blue Star: A Novel

It’s 1942 and in occupied Poland eighteen-year-old, Sadie and her family can’t imagine any horror worse than living in the Krakow Ghetto. But when the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, their only choice is to hide in the sewers beneath the city. They spend their days immersed in the dark, although Sadie occasionally steals glimpses of the daylight by sneaking over to the city grate. One day, a wealthy Polish girl named Ella spots Sadie beneath the grate, and against all odds the two strike up a friendship. As the war worsens, their friendship grows more and more dangerous, until eventually Sadie and Ella must both test its bounds.

The Woman with the Blue Star, while mostly fictional, is based on very real accounts of Jewish Poles forced to live in Krakow’s sewers during World War II. Pam Jenoff paints a vivid portrait of the horrors, the heartbreak, and the fight for survival they endured. This novel sits at an interesting intersection between young adult and adult fiction––the sometimes overly simplified writing, as well as the young ages of the characters, make it feel more like a young adult book, yet it seems to be marketed more toward an adult audience––but readers of any age will absolutely be moved by Sadie and Ella’s heartbreaking story.