The Woman with the Blue Star

December 1, 2020

In the New York Times best-selling Henry's People We Meet on Vacation, vivacious travel writer Poppy once vacationed yearly with straight-and-narrow best friend Alex, but their last vacation left their relationship in shreds, and Poppy must talk him into one last trip so they can right the balance. In Jenoff's The Woman with the Blue Star, 18-year-old Sadie Gault is hiding in the sewers after the liquidation of the Krak�w ghetto when she forms a tentative friendship with wealthy Polish girl Ella Stepanek (500,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Just Last Night, the latest from the internationally best-selling McFarlane (If I Never Met You), Eve is still crushing on Ed, among their group of four forever best friends, but her questions about what might have been are interrupted by a catastrophe upending all their lives (50,000-copy first printing). Best-selling novelist/memoirist Maynard returns with Count the Ways, which tracks the fate of a family when the parents break up after an accident that permanently injures the youngest child (50,000-copy first printing). Oakley follows up You Were There Too, a LibraryReads pick whose film rights have been sold, with The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, featuring an ambitious young journalist disgruntled about having to cover a fundraiser on Chesapeake Bay's Frick Island until he discovers the townsfolk pretending to hear and see a man who's not there--all for the sake of his widow. Inspired by a real-life individual, Phillips's The Family Law stars a crusading young family lawyer in early 1980s Alabama whose efforts to help women escape abusive marriages brings death threats that eventually endanger a teenager she has befriended. In Shipman's latest, terminally ill Emily wants the lifelong friends she made at summer camp in 1985 to scatter her ashes at the camp, and The Clover Girls find another life-affirming request from her when they oblige (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). No plot details yet on Weiner's That Summer, but the setting is sunstruck Cape Cod, and there's a 350,000-copy first printing. Weir's Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife, tells the story of twice-widowed Katharine, cornered into marriage with Henry VIII and shamelessly used by an old lover after Henry's death.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2021
In Nazi-occupied Krak�w, a friendship between two young women, one Jewish and one Polish, alters the destinies of both. The present-day prologue introduces an unidentified 70-something woman who is visiting Poland, trying to work up the nerve to make contact with a 90-ish Krak�w resident. The novel proper alternates the first-person narratives of Sadie Gault and Ella Stepanek, both 19. A mass deportation of Krak�w's Jews in 1943 drives Sadie's father to take desperate measures to avoid the camps. With the help of Pawel, a Polish sewer worker, Sadie and her parents escape into Krak�w's sewer tunnels, but Sadie's father drowns along the way. To avoid capture, Sadie and her mother--who's pregnant--must hide in a small chamber inside the sewer system along with the Rosenbergs, a more devout family. Meanwhile, Ella's father died defending Poland, and her stepmother, Ana, is now welcoming German officers to Ella's family home (where she lives at Ana's sufferance). Then one day, walking through a market, Ella spots Sadie through a grate, and they make eye contact. She returns the next day, and gradually the acquaintance between the young women warms into friendship. Sewer living gets even more challenging when Pawel, sole source of food and supplies, is arrested. Ella, aided by her resistance fighter boyfriend, smuggles food to the refugees. Sadie and young Saul Rosenberg overcome their religious differences and fall in love. After Sadie's mother gives birth, the infant's wails force the fugitives to make a terrible choice. All these well-drawn characters have too few options, which they debate endlessly and repetitiously. The description of how the sewer dwellers exist for months in a small, bare, filthy space is sketchy. The book's timeline can feel vague--the main action is happening in 1943, but the historical circumstances suggest 1944. There are continuity glitches. At the beginning of the book, Ella notes that her father left no will, but much later, the will turns up with no comment. Contemporary parlance creeps in: "we can do this," "a few months tops." Still, there are gripping scenes, particularly toward the end, and a poignant epilogue. Powerful but in need of a polish.

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March 22, 2021
Jenoff’s spellbinding latest (after The Lost Girls of Paris) follows a Jewish family hiding from the Nazis in Kraków, Poland. Famished 18-year-old Sadie Gault’s parents insist she hide in a crawl space of their ghetto apartment in 1942, to spare her from grueling forced labor. A year later, facing intensifying raids, the family escapes into the sewer system with help from a worker who explains the tunnels and brings them food. Sadie bonds over books with the 20-something son of another family hiding with them, and their friendship blossoms into romance. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, a young Catholic woman named Ella Stepanek dreams of marrying her boyfriend and yearns to flee from her cruel Nazi collaborator stepmother. While running an errand at the market, Ella happens to glance down at a sewer grate in the street and sees Sadie looking up at her. Thus begins a lifesaving friendship in which both young women discover great inner resources neither one knew she possessed. Jenoff drew on a true story for this harrowing narrative, and shapes it with precise details of the subterranean world and of the city’s churches, markets, and cafes. This moving tale of young women’s will to survive on their own terms will appeal to readers of all ages. Agent: Susan Ginsberg, Writers House.

April 15, 2021
Best-selling Jenoff's latest mesmerizing and meticulous WWII novel, following The Lost Girls of Paris (2019), charts the intersecting lives of two young women. In 1942 in Krakow, 18-year-old Sadie lives in the Jewish quarter, longing for a life beyond the walls of the ghetto. When the Germans arrive to round up the community, Sadie and her parents flee down into the sewers in a harrowing, ultimately devastating escape. Although this was meant to be a temporary hiding place, they are stranded there for weeks, a predicament further complicated by Sadie's mother's pregnancy. After losing her father, well-off Ella, 19, is living in Krakow with her conniving stepmother. One day Ella spies Sadie through a grate in the street, and the two form an unexpected friendship, offering respite from the escalating dangers. As days continue to pass, however, each is forced to make heartbreaking choices. Alternating between Sadie's and Ella's points of view, Jenoff creates a rich drama from her compelling characters' connection, growth, and perseverance despite unimaginable horrors.

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