Books with author Suzanne Nelson

A story of courage in the face of evil. The tense drama of Suzanne Spaak who risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz. This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust. Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups “kidnapped” hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations.

A single pair of shoes connects lives across different times and places in an unforgettable journey—a story of strength, love, bravery, memory, and the serendipity that binds us all together. Dalya is the daughter of a cobbler in Berlin, and though she is only fifteen, she knows she will follow in her father’s footsteps. Then, one violent November night, she is forced into a concentration camp, and must leave behind everything she knew and loved . . . including the single, gorgeous pair of shoes she was finally allowed to craft for herself. Meanwhile, Dalya’s beloved shoes take their own journey to America. When they wind up in a secondhand shop, they enter the lives of Ray and Pinny, two modern-day orphans who couldn’t be more different. Ray is jagged around the edges in every possible way, with music her only escape. Pinny believes in the More of life . . . and she doesn’t want the fact that she has Down syndrome to stop her from living her dreams. One pair of shoes intertwines these lives in ways as moving as they are memorable. “Addresses racism, morality, discrimination, and self-esteem, all with exceptional tact and sensitivity. This uplifting story depicts the best and worst in humanity and the true strength of the human spirit.” —School Library Journal