Dis­cov­er the lives of nine ordi­nary women: first female rab­bi Regi­na Jonas; par­ti­san pho­tog­ra­ph­er Faye Schul­man; British intel­li­gence offi­cer Vera Atkins; activist writer Rachel Auer­bach; edu­ca­tor and sur­ro­gate moth­er Lena Sil­ber­man; Japan­ese res­cuer Yukiko Sug­i­hara; Pol­ish res­cuer Ire­na Opdyke; and the author’s moth­er and aunt, survi­vors of the Holo­caust. They all took extra­or­di­nary mea­sures to save lives dur­ing the Holo­caust, while under­cov­er or in hid­ing, in ghet­tos and con­cen­tra­tion camps, in forests and in exile. With com­pas­sion and admi­ra­tion, author Sarah Sil­ber­stein Swartz tells the sto­ries of these young women who stood up for them­selves and oth­ers in dan­ger­ous times. Over­looked by his­to­ry, they leapt from fear to action with a brav­ery that deserves recog­ni­tion. They serve as mod­els for over­com­ing obsta­cles, large and small, and for stand­ing up against big­otry and hate in today’s com­plex and often unjust world. Their pow­er­ful sto­ries are told from a femi­nist per­spec­tive and pro­vide a new def­i­n­i­tion for what it means to be heroic.