Based on the gripping true story of an unlikely Polish resistance
fighter who helped save thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw
ghetto during World War II, bestselling author James D. Shipman's
Irena's War is a heart-pounding novel of courage in action, helmed by an
extraordinary and unforgettable protagonist.
September 1939: The conquering Nazis swarm through Warsaw as social
worker Irena Sendler watches in dread from her apartment window.
Already, the city's poor go hungry. Irena wonders how she will continue
to deliver food and supplies to those who need it most, including the
forbidden Jews. The answer comes unexpectedly.
Dragged from her home in the night, Irena is brought before a Gestapo
agent, Klaus Rein, who offers her a position running the city's soup
kitchens, all to maintain the illusion of order. Though loath to be
working under the Germans, Irena learns there are ways to defy her new
employer--including forging documents so that Jewish families receive
food intended for Aryans. As Irena grows bolder, her interactions with
Klaus become more fraught and perilous.
Klaus is unable to prove his suspicions against Irena--yet. But once
Warsaw's half-million Jews are confined to the ghetto, awaiting slow
starvation or the death camps, Irena realizes that providing food is no
longer enough. Recruited by the underground Polish resistance
organization Zegota, she carries out an audacious scheme to rescue
Jewish children. One by one, they are smuggled out in baskets and
garbage carts, or led through dank sewers to safety--every success
raising Klaus's ire. Determined to quell the uprising, he draws Irena
into a cat-and-mouse game that will test her in every way--and where the
slightest misstep could mean not just her own death, but the slaughter
of those innocents she is so desperate to save.
