HIDDEN YELLOW STARS, by Rebecca Connolly, Shadow Mountain, March 5, 2024, Hardcover, $26.99 (new adult/adult fiction)
Hidden Yellow Stars, by Rebecca Connolly, tells the story of two women who risked everything to save Jewish children from the Gestapo during WWII.
Belgium, 1942
Young schoolteacher Andrée Geulen secretly defies the Nazis in Belgium, who are forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David. Andrée is not Jewish, but she feels a maternal connection to her students, who are living in constant fear, and decides to take action. No child should have to suffer under such persecution. But what can one woman do against an entire army?
Ida Sterno is a Jewish woman who works with the Committee for the Defense of Jews in Belgium, a clandestine resistance group tasked with hiding children from the Gestapo. She wants to recruit Andrée because her Aryan appearance can provide crucial security measures for their efforts. Andrée agrees to join and begins work immediately by adopting a code name: Claude Fournier.
Together, Andrée and Ida, and their undercover operatives, work around the clock to move Jewish children from their families and smuggle them to safety through the secret channels established by the resistance. As each child is hidden, Andrée commits to memory their true name and history. Someday, she vows, she will help reunite as many of these families as she can.
But with the Gestapo closing in and the traitorous Fat Jacques who has turned from ally to enemy and is threatening to identify and expose any Jew he meets, Andrée and Ida must work even harder against increasingly impossible odds to save as many children as possible and keep them safely hidden — even if it might cost them their own lives. —Synopsis provided by Shadow Mountain
Hidden Yellow Stars is based on the true story of Andrée Geulen and Ida Sterno who helped hide nearly 3,000 children from the Nazis. It’s a meticulously researched novel that tugs at the heartstrings.
Hidden Yellow Stars is told from the alternating viewpoints of Andrée and Ida. Andrée is a smart young schoolteacher who has no love for the Nazis. Her blonde hair and blue eyes help her defy them in plain sight. Ida is an independent Jewish woman who is married in name only to a man who is not Jewish. Her marriage gives her some protection, but she works better behind the scenes than on the frontlines.
Author Rebecca Connolly’s use of alternating viewpoints provides readers with a larger picture of this part of the resistance movement in Belgium. Through Andrée and Ida, you get to see all the moving parts and dangers associated with them.
Connolly is known for her ability to make historical events compelling and accessible. Under the Cover of Mercy, her novel that follows a group of nurses work to save the lives of soldiers behind enemy lines during WWI is particularly moving.
And Hidden Yellow Stars is no different.
Connolly’s writing is smooth and familiar. She doesn’t shy away from the Nazis’ horrendous atrocities, but she’s never gratuitous. An author’s note, notes on quotations and an extensive bibliography, as well as photographs of the real Andrée and Ida are included at the end of the book.
Hidden Yellow Stars is a fast-moving historical novel that is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
*Cracking the Cover occasionally features books that are technically adult fiction but are appropriate for young adult readers. Though there are a few moments of violence and descriptions of death, Hidden Yellow Stars is still suitable for older young adults, new adults, and readers of adult fiction.
About the author:
Rebecca Connolly is the author of more than two dozen novels. She calls herself a Midwest girl, having lived in Ohio and Indiana. She’s always been a bookworm, and her grandma would send her books almost every month so she would never run out. Book Fairs were her carnival, and libraries are her happy place. She received a master’s degree from West Virginia University.
While doing research for this book, she discovered information about her own family history, including the fates of several unknown family members who perished in the concentration camps of World War II.
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