Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks
when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days
Emma's husband, Jacob, a fiery and independent scholar, is
forced to disappear underground, leaving Emma and her
parents imprisoned within the city's decrepit, moldering
Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, she is
smuggled out of the ghetto. Taken to Krakow to live with her
husband's Catholic cousin, Krysia, Emma takes on a new
identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile.
Emma's already precarious situation is complicated by her
introduction to Kommandant Georg Richwalder, a high-ranking
Nazi official who insists that Emma come work for him--a job
she cannot refuse without arousing suspicion. Urged by the
Resistance to use her position--and the kommandant's obvious
romantic intentions--to gain access to details of the Nazi
occupation, Emma must become perilously close to her enemy
and, now is perpetual danger of being discovered, finds
herself questioning loyalty and duty, fearful of risking
here life and the lives of those she loves.
Based in part on actual events, Pam Jenoff 's astonishing
debut novel delivers unrelenting tension in an achingly
beautiful account of a young woman forced to bend loyalties,
deny truths and betray her own beliefs--a woman almost
powerless against her extraordinary circumstances, who must
decide which risks are worth taking and which vows are worth
breaking.
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