Based on a True Story of Wartime Heroism: The Story of Wartime Photographer Gerda Taro
by Kip Wilson
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2023
416 pages
Genre: Poetry & Novels in Verse
Publication Information
From critically acclaimed author Kip Wilson comes this gripping coming of age historical fiction novel in verse about Gerda Taro, a vibrant, headstrong photojournalist with a passion for capturing the truth amid political turmoil and the first woman photojournalist killed in combat.
The daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gerta Pohorylle doesn't quite fit in with her German classmates. While she's away at boarding school, however, she becomes a master at reinventing herself as a vibrant, confident young woman. When she returns from school, she joins a group of young activists and is arrested for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. Her family decides she must leave Germany.
In Paris, Gerta meets André Friedman, a Hungarian photographer eager for fame and fortune, who fosters Gerda's interest in photography. Together the pair reinvents their brand of photojournalism under the names Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, in part to gloss over their Jewish ancestry, and soon they're traveling to areas of military conflict and selling their photos for high prices. Gerda continues to travel solo through Europe, often the only woman in journalism circles. Her assignments eventually lead her to Spain to cover the growing conflict that is becoming the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), part of events leading to World War II.
True to her political beliefs, Gerda pushes closer and closer to the front line, eager to capture the lives and vibrant hopes of Spanish republican forces fighting against fascism, only to lose sight of her own safety.
"The free-form verse is written in the present tense, each moment of the story its own indelible snapshot. The book captures the subject's life and the times she lived through with complexity and depth: This is not just a story of the violence of fascism, but of the burning joy of freedom and the exhilaration of shaping, with sweat and blood, a better world." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This perceptive volume utilizes fluid, first-person present narration told with a joyful tone amid violent fascism to deliver a snapshot into an intriguing life." - Publishers Weekly
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Rosanne Samson
Kip Wilson is the author of White Rose, which won the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature, and the Poetry Editor of the Young Adult Review Network. She has a Ph.D. in German Literature. She is also the winner of the PEN/New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award and her work has appeared in several children's literary magazines. She lives in Boston, MA.
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