The gripping story of Gracianna—a French-Basque girl forced to make impossible decisions after being recruited into the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.
Gracianna is inspired by true events in the life of Trini Amador’s great-grandmother, Gracianna Lasaga. As an adult, Amador was haunted by the vivid memory of finding a loaded German Luger tucked away in a nightstand while wandering his great-grandmother’s home in Southern California. He was only four years old at the time, but the memory remained and he knew he had to explore the story behind the gun.
Decades later, Amador would delve into the remarkable odyssey of his Gracianna’s past, a road that led him to an incredible surprise. In Gracianna, Amador weaves fact and fiction to tell his great-grandmother’s story.
Gracianna bravely sets off to Paris in the early 1940s—on her way to America, she hopes—but is soon swept into the escalation of the war and the Nazi occupation of Paris. After chilling life-and-death struggles, she discovers that her missing sister has surfaced as a laborer in Auschwitz. When she finds an opportunity to fight back against the Nazis to try to free her sister, she takes it—even if it means using lethal force.
As Amador tells the imagined story of how his great-grandmother risked it all, he delivers richly drawn characters and a heart-wrenching page-turner that listeners won’t soon forget.
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“Debut novelist Trini Amador sparkles as this riveting story unfolds. His characters are deeply endowed with vibrant features and flaws and his evocative descriptions allow readers to experience each environment as though they had been there themselves. The story is carefully crafted, flowing smoothly and constantly, with impressive purpose and inspiration. More than a tale of good and evil, Gracianna is spun from convincing and memorable scenes and vivid personalities—a compelling and inspiring novel whose chronicle and characters will remain in the reader’s memory long after.”
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New York Journal of Books