Irenas War, James D. Shipman
Irenas War, James D. Shipman
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Irena's War

Author: James D. Shipman

Narrator: Romy Nordlinger

Unabridged: 12 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/22/2020


Synopsis

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.

About James D. Shipman

James D. Shipman is the bestselling author of several historical novels, including Irena's War, Task Force Baum, Constantinopolis, Going Home, It Is Well, and A Bitter Rain. He was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and began publishing short stories and poems while earning a degree in history from the University of Washington and a law degree from Gonzaga University. He opened his own law firm in 2004 and remains a practicing attorney. An avid reader, especially of historical nonfiction, Shipman also enjoys traveling and spending time with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nursebookie on January 14, 2021

Irena’s War is a fast paced story based on Polish resistance fighter Irena Sendler. This is a book that will blow you away. This will be among one of the best Holocaust fiction I have read so far. In a gripping well researched story with impeccable pacing, you will find this book hard to put down. I......more

Goodreads review by Carolyn on June 01, 2022

Irena Sendler was a strong, determined, smart and beautiful woman who didn’t seem to understand the words “no” or “impossible.” This author, James. D. Shipman did an extraordinary, engrossing, and captivating of telling the story of this true heroine. Most the characters were real and changed the na......more

Goodreads review by Mystica on December 10, 2020

This book based on a true story of an unlikely woman who would take up the call to save over 2500 Jewish children from the gas chambers and whose descendants today must number over tens of thousands. A social worker by profession, she lived a restricted life governed by her irate mother and saw Wars......more