It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Girl with the Red Hair

The Girl with the Red Hair

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The greatest hero of the Second World War
... is a girl you've never heard of.

A blazing debut novel based on the unsung true story of Hannie Schaft, a young-woman-turned-Dutch-Resistance-fighter in Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

_______

1940, Amsterdam.

You're nineteen years old. You have dreams of your own. You never trained to be a soldier.

But your dreams died in wartime, and your country is under siege. What do you do when the people you love are no longer safe?

Hiding them is not enough. Will you stand aside as the menace of Nazi evil tightens its grip on your homeland? Or do you unleash your fury, joining forces with your enemies' enemies, plotting to strike?

Because if not you, then who?

You're drawn deep into a web of plots, disguises and assassinations. The Resistance trained you for this. You flash your enemies a smile and beckon them closer. Little do they know you've grown used to the weight of a gun in your hand...

Underestimating you is their fatal mistake. Whispers spread like wildfire amongst enemies and friends alike.

They will know your name.

You're "the Girl with the Red Hair." A match for any Nazi soldier, a true threat, a target.


A tale of formidable defiance told through the eyes of a young heroine so notorious that Hitler himself personally ordered for her capture. Buzzy Jackson's debut is an unputdownable novel of love, loyalty, and the limits we confront when our deepest values are tested.

'Inspiring, empowering, and timely, compellingly detailed and impressively researched, but better still, it's an immersive story of a terrifying warren of history through which our guide is the sort of hero we all need right now: relatable and resolute and absolutely right' Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS

©2023 Buzzy Jackson (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • Inspiring, empowering, and timely, compellingly detailed and impressively researched, but better still, it's an immersive story of a terrifying warren of history through which our guide is the sort of hero we all need right now: relatable and resolute and absolutely right
    Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS

About the author

Buzzy Jackson

Buzzy Jackson is the award-winning author of three non-fiction books and holds a PhD in History from UC Berkeley. She was inspired to write The Girl with the Red Hair - her first novel - after visiting the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) in Amsterdam. There, she discovered the story of a young woman named Hannie Schaft, who at nineteen-years-old quit college to fight fascism and became the most wanted woman in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Buzzy lives in Colorado, USA.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more