Gracianna

By: Trini Amador

Narrated by: Trini Amador

Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

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 pause-resister that listeners won’t soon forget.

©2013 by Jose Trinidad Amador III (P)2020 Jose Trinidad Amador III

Enjoyed your story!

Visited the winery in July 2022 and saw the information about the book. Thank you for sharing your family’s story. Your Grandmother was one tough woman.

Touching

I am in awe of Graciana & all she gave to help during WWII. You hear hints of such bravery hear & there but to read her story is truly awe inspiring! Thank you Graciana & friends for what you did to stop the Nazis & thank you to the author for sharing her story!!

what a story!!

I had no idea it wasn’t fiction until the end. Truths can be hard to hear but these truths were told In the most respectful way possible. He didn’t try to use shock to tell the story; he simply let the story tell itself and I appreciate that very much! There are lots of books that I will forget through the years but this is Not one of them! I am truly thankful to the author for telling his grandmother story. I don’t have enough space here to put into words what an important story this is ! I believe that most middle school and all high school children would benefit from hearing the story. It is told in such a delicate way that it in my opinion is appropriate for almost anyone👍🏻

excellent

Thank you for writing the deep, his story rich & revealing book. speaks how grateful we should be for our freedom and the courage, determination and strength of an amazing Basque woman.

Pleasantly Surprised

many times the freebies in audibles member library are duds so my hopes were not high for this book. I determined I would give it 30 minutes to prove it's worth. (besides being a freebie being read by the author has shown itself to be not at all worth the listen)
30 minutes turned to an hour, then to hours as I was mesmerized with the story of each character in the book. especially so with Juan and Gracianna.
The story was fabulous, though at times I wanted to shake the main character 🤫.
The voice of the author was not at all horrendous, actually it felt as if I were sitting listening to a storyteller.
This is a good book and I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Loved this story

This book started slow for me. I started and stopped it twice. Once I stayed with it and got into the storyline, I couldn't stop listening. Parts were very hard to hear, you know what they say about history.
I wonder if I could be as strong?

It was good

The only reason for me giving it 4 stars is because the the beginning of the book was hard to follow and to figure out why they were talking about different people. He never tied them together until much later.

Wow. It’s rare that I listened to an audible and considered every sentence important

I would give it 10 stars if I could. Fascinating and informative. I’ve hardly heard of the Basque people cause I thought they were in Spain only but I looked at several maps to see it in France too. I also learned about the life of a sheep herder what a hard lonely life it appeared to be. The story seems so smooth and plausible and showed the nazis evil deeds when they occupied Paris. Much credit is due the resistance and those ‘nobodies” who bravely fought them. This is truly the greatest generation. Only problem with this audio is no time line. I didn’t know where they were in the war. When did book start? when did vital things in the book happen. I was lost and it mattered to me to have the timeline. But it doesn’t negate the fact that it was excellent. The author and narrator were some of best I’ve heard

Thank you for this retelling

This is yet another perspective of the Holocaust that I am grateful to hear. Thank you for sharing with all your readers.

My absolute favorite book.

I loved everything about this story and the the narrator. I think it’s a very passionate story about war, struggle and heroism that I can only hope our generation would be able to duplicate but doubt would even come close.
Thank you for sharing your family’s history.