Community Library Notes: The Woman with the Blue Star by Pam Jenoff
“The Woman with the Blue Star” by Pam Jenoff, author of “The Lost Girls of Paris”, is the story of Sadie who lives in Krakow Poland in 1942. She tells her own tale beginning with Germans stomping through her apartment looking for children to take to the camps. When the sounds of the boots come closer she hides in the trunk in the bedroom until the men leave. When Mama comes home from the factory and doesn’t find Sadie in her usual hiding place, she wants to fling herself out the window to the cobblestones below. One of the mothers had done this when her children were gone. Author Jenoff uses tension to keep readers moving forward.
Ella also lives in the ghetto with a stepmother she hates because she entertains German soldiers at her home with rich food and many bottles of wine. When Ella meets Kris it’s as if they always knew each other, they shared so much. When he went to fight they broke up and she didn’t hear from him again. When Sadie hears shouts and noises again she knows the German soldiers are back rounding people up and forcing them into trucks. She sees Papa digging a hole next to the toilet and is startled to see a man helping him to enlarge the hole. Mama tells Sadie to dress warmly and to go into the hole. The strange man helps Sadie and then Mama who is pregnant with her big belly. When they get through they are met by a river and must straddle it on a walkway on both sides. Papa reaches to help Sadie and falls in the water. The sewer worker keeps mama from going in after Papa. “He was a good swimmer,” says Mama with hope but Papa is caught under debris.
The tunnel is dark and strange but they keep going. Because the end of the tunnel is blocked by Germans the family must stay there. Sadie doesn’t like the rats, but Pavel convinces Sadie to remain there and he will bring them food. Mama passes him some money. In the bag her father had brought with him is a chain and a pendant that says “Chai” or “life.” Papa wanted Sadie to have it.
Ella writes her brother Michael in 1943 who lives in Paris with Phillipe. They exchange letters often using code to tell secrets. Later Ella looking to buy cherries for her stepmother sees Krys at a café seated next to a stunning woman. Ella thought he was still away fighting the war. As she runs away Krys tries to tell her why he has not called. She runs away and at the black market, she finds dried cherries and buys all they have. She throws the pit of a cherry into a sewer grate and sees the eyes of a girl. Ella makes a sound and the girl is gone.
When Sadie can get away she walks into the sewer and becomes friends with Saul. Mostly they read books together but often they talk about their past lives and their families. Pavel brings them food even when their money is gone. Saul is engaged to a beautiful woman and Sadie feels jealous even though they are just friends. Saul’s family is very religious and Saul wears a Yarmulke and they have a mezuzah on the door of their chamber. They can be identified as Jews instantly.
Suddenly Sadie stands by a grate and sees and hears people at the marketplace above. She sees a girl on the other side wearing clean clothes and bright red hair tied in a bow. She carries a bouquet of flowers she must have bought at the market. Mama comes upon Sadie and says “There will be flowers someday.” Mama tells her to stay out of sight. Ella goes to the sewer grate again and gives the girl a piece of bread and a coin. They talk quietly for a moment before Krys finds her there and urges her to leave the area. Ella sees a woman and her two children jump off the bridge and drown rather than be caught by German soldiers. Ella knows not to go back to see Sadie.
Later it begins to rain and the water pours down constantly. Soon it is up to Sadie’s face. Saul is helping his father and grandmother remain upright. The next night Sadie and Saul go to investigate if there is another way out of there in case of an emergency. Later they see a basin and tunnel leading u p to where they see the stars, a possible escape route but they turn around and return to their chambers.
The next day, Sunday, Ella goes to meet Sadie but there are Germans there and Krys is there too. He saves Ella with lies and after the Germans leave, he tells her he is now with the underground, the Home Army. She meets Sadie and tells her of a different place on the river bank where they might be safer. They must try it at night. Soon, the Jews are out of food because Pavel has been arrested. Sadie decides to go get food where the other family has hidden it in the ghetto behind their old apartment. She asks Ella to help her get onto the street. But they don’t find the food and Ella takes Sadie to Krys’ apartment above a café nearby. Ella tells Krys she needs food for Sadie and her family. He will try to help. Sadie begs to be allowed to stay outside the sewer. Ella agrees, feeling
Sadie’s yearning to stay out under the stars. Ella’s house is the best possibility as her stepmother is out for the night with Colonel Maust. But unexpectedly the stepmother and the German beau come home and Ella hides Sadie in the armoire, then takes her to the grate. Krys gives Sadie a large sack of potatoes. When Sadie gets back to her chamber her Mama is having her baby and a girl is born. But the baby cries a lot and Sadie worries that others above ground will hear her. The grandmother of the other family says the baby has to go. There is a hospital that takes Jewish babies and places them in hiding with other families.
Krys finds Ella on the street and tells her the Germans have set mines in the sewers to destroy Warsaw. Explosions sound everywhere, terrifying the families. Do they get out of the sewers in time? Do Saul and Sadie find one another in the future? Find this absorbing story peopled by realistic characters created by author Jenoff on the new fiction shelf of your local library.