The Heroine in the Bus Stairwell

The elderly Anna Kapalevitch jams her foot into the closing door of a crowded Israeli bus on a bustling Friday afternoon in the summer of 1976. The driver refuses to let her board as she defiantly stands her ground in the doorway. Following a short argument, he allows her to sit in the stairwell but forbids her to speak to him during the journey. But Anna can’t help herself. As the bus descends from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, she reflects on her past as an active member of a youth movement in Nazi-occupied Poland and her extraordinary role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Amidst humankind's darkest hour, when all seemed lost, something spectacular happened. The lives of Anna and the driver, as well as the passengers listening in, are dramatically altered by her story of action and hope. The Heroine in the Bus Stairwell is a fictional novel inspired by historical facts and true stories of ghetto fighters, partisans in the forests of Poland, and holocaust survivors who lived to tell their tales. The unexpected encounter between the bus driver and his remarkable passenger is based on a true story.