Underground Woman

A white woman in a mostly minority male workplace, Swerdlow helped edit a newsletter, Hell on Wheels, and tried to organize for better working conditions, confronting the Kafkaesque Transit Authority bureaucracy and complacent union leadership. This book presents her account that is laden with anecdotes that range from the funny to the absurd.

By turns thrilling and terrifying, Underground in Berlin is the autobiographical account of a young Jewish woman who ripped off her yellow star and survived the war by going underground from 1942 to 1945. Berlin, 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie decides to survive. She takes off the yellow star, turns her back on the Jewish community and vanishes into the city. In the years that follow, Marie lives under an assumed identity, moving between almost 20 different safe houses. She is forced to accept shelter wherever she can find it, and many of those she stays with expect services in return. She stays with foreign workers, committed communists and even convinced Nazis. Any false move might lead to arrest. Never certain who can be trusted and how far, it is her quick-witted determination and the most amazing and hair-raising strokes of luck that ensure her survival. Underground in Berlin is Marie's extraordinary story, told in her own voice with unflinching honesty, for the first time after more than 50 years of silence.

A newlywed gazes upon the wreckage of the Titanic. A young woman becomes the protégé of a Parisian hotelier. An old woman meets an angel in a ghost town. With arresting imagery and heart-wrenching storylines, these short stories from a master writer use humor and imagination to weave together themes of loss, dignity, tenacity and acceptance.

Lauren Stratford's story is one that everyone needs to read, though it deals with a subject most of us would rather not discuss, a subject that for many is too horrendous even to believe. Lauren Stratford lived a life of unending nightmares. As a small child she was offered sexually to strange men. Soon after, she was forced into a torturous routine of pornography, was controlled by mind- and body-altering drugs, and constantly received threats to her life. Though she sought help several times from adults she thought could be trusted with her secrets, no one was willing to risk becoming involved. After years of suffering what many would call the ultimate evil of sexual abuse, Lauren was held captive in the even more appalling world of Satanism and ritual abuse. Forced to participate in some of the most evil satanic rituals imaginable, Lauren was witness to shocking crimes against children and others, all performed in the name of Satan. Tormented sexually and mentally by the cult members, Lauren survived the torture because of her strong faith in God and her belief that He would deliver her from the evil of which she had become a part. It is an undisputed fact that this type of abuse occurs in the world today. Through this shocking story, anyone who is caught in the trap of sexual or ritual abuse can learn that there is a way out--that with the help of God and others, victims like Lauren can break free. Parents, counselors, law-enforcement personnel, and anyone who may know of or suspect a case of abuse will find in this book invaluable advice. Discover how the veil of such horrible abuse can be lifted for all who suffer.

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

A tragic love triangle set in a forgotten place during an invisible war. Inspired by true events, Underground tells the story of a troubled romance between Lukas and Elena, two members of the underground Lithuanian resistance movement in mid- 1940s. After shooting up a room full of Soviet government workers during their engagement party, Lukas and Elena become folk heroes to their political cause, but are forced deep into hiding in order to escape punishment for their role in the massacre. When their secret bunker is discovered, Lukas is nearly captured. Believing his beloved Elena has been killed in the raid, Lukas is forced to flee the country and the increasingly hopeless resistance movement that he has defended over the years. Finding himself stranded in Paris, Lukas tries in vain to generate some political interest in the plight of his country. Settling quietly in Europe, Lukas falls in love again, remarries, and begins his life anew. When an unexpected crisis arises back home, the tranquility of Lukas’ new life is shattered. Stealing back into his former country, Lukas embarks on the most important fight of his life. Based on true historical revelations and fragments of the author’s family history, Underground is an engaging literary thriller and love story that explores the narrow range of options open to men and women in desperate situations, when history crashes into personal desires and private life.

When the Japanese began their brutal occupation of the Philippines in January 1942, 76,000 ill and starving Filipino and American troops tried to hold out on Bataan and Corregidor. That spring, after having been forced to surrender, most of those men were thrown into Japanese POW camps while dozens of others slipped away to organize guerrilla forces. During the three violent years of occupation that followed, Allied sympathizers in Manila smuggled supplies and information to the guerrillas and the prisoners. Theresa Kaminski's Angels of the Underground tells the story of four American women who were part of this little-known resistance movement: Gladys Savary, Claire Phillips, Yay Panlilio, and Peggy Utinsky - all incredibly adept at skirting occupation authorities to support the Allied war effort. The nature of their clandestine work meant that the truth behind their dangerous activities had to be obscured as long as the Japanese occupied the Philippines. If caught, they would be imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Throughout the Pacific War, these four women remained hidden behind a veil of deceit and subterfuge. An impressive work of scholarship grounded in archival research, FBI documents, and memoirs, Angels of the Underground illuminates the complex political dimensions of the occupied Philippines and its importance to the war effort in the Pacific. Kaminski's narrative sheds light on the Japanese-occupied city of Manila; the Bataan Death March and subsequent incarceration of American military prisoners in camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan; and the formation of guerrilla units in the mountains of Luzon. Angels of the Underground offers the compelling tale of four ordinary American women propelled by extraordinary circumstances into acts of heroism, and makes a significant contribution to the work on women's wartime experiences. Through the lives of Gladys, Yay, Claire, and Peggy, who never wavered in their belief that it was their duty as patriotic American women to aid the Allied cause, Kaminski highlights how women have always been active participants in war, whether or not they wear a military uniform.

Reveals the centrality of women rebels to Fidel Castro's Cuban insurrection in the 1950s.