BOOKS IN BRIEF
Reviews by David Trawinski
Rising
by Regina McIntyre
2024
DAMTE Associates Publishing LLC
Disclaimer: This work was published by the reviewer’s publishing company, DAMTE Associates Publishing LLC.
“Rising” is the compelling and spellbinding novel set against the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising. Historically accurate to the drama’s most definable details, it encompasses a gut-wrenching tale of the many heroic lives impacted by this rising of the war-weary Poles against their oppressive overlords, the Nazi forces of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, as their dire situation is catastrophically manipulated by Stalin’s Soviet forces.
So reads the blurb I wrote for the back cover of this impressively written work of historical fiction, and I stand by every adjective in it. What I find to be so inspiring is the fact that this is the second novel of war-torn Warsaw by author Regina McIntyre, who just happens to be ninety-two years old. She is of Polish ancestry, and her lifetime’s knowledge and embracing of her beloved heritage adds so much depth to this work. “Rising” is the sequel to “Resistance,” her historical novel of 2022, with its Polish American Journal review then being my personal introduction to this wonderful author. Her debut work was the Partitions of Poland tale, “An Altar of Sod” released in 2010.
The setting of “Rising” is indeed a story that most Polish Americans know well factually; for sixty-three heart-stopping days, otherwise ordinary Poles rose up to throw off the shackles of their oppressors to fight alongside the Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army), only to be ultimately sacrificed to slaughter. That carnage came to pass as Stalin’s Red Army sat inactively and watched from the far banks of the Vistula. Not only did the Russians offer no material assistance in overtaking the Nazis, they actively denied other Allied armies from providing food and war fighting supplies to airports under their control. In writing this novel, Miss McIntyre has performed tireless research, and the depths of her efforts show throughout it. She lists her source materials in detail at both the introduction and the final appendix of the work.
Amid this kinetically chaotic and adrenaline-drenched uprising, the author has deftly interwoven a cast of everyday Poles who endure the peril and tragedy of the resultant onslaught by the Nazi Wehrmacht. The development of these characters is the true triumph of this work, and the reader will become greatly attached to them, and in some cases, may even shed a tear for those destined to make the ultimate sacrifice.
It is the literary growth displayed between the two World War II works, “Resistance” and “Rising” that is most impressive to me as a writer. While “Resistance” possessed a great story arc, it was somewhat held back by its scant development of an otherwise richly diverse set of conceived characters: businessmen, newspapermen, cafe owners, housewives, and even Catholic priests. Their story is compelling, as they all went about their everyday lives in occupied Warsaw, only to surreptitiously establish the foundations of what would become World War II’s most adamant resistance to the Nazi invasion and occupation. Still, each character’s individual persona could have been developed a bit further to truly bond with the reader.
Most of these fictional men and women are carried over into “Rising,” and as if driven by the explosively rebellious microcosm in which they find themselves, their true character is called out in response to an even greater crisis. The reader can feel the pull of history and its compulsion for these Warsawians to do more than merely “resist,” but to “rise” up in active defiance to their brutal oppressors. Most importantly, this novel makes clear the ultimate dichotomy of this tragic rebellion — that while it ultimately would end in military defeat for those who rose up, its transcendent success was in demonstrating to the world that the everyday people of Warsaw and all of Poland should never be judged to have been complicit in the terrors and indefensibly heinous acts perpetrated on their occupied native soil.
Regina McIntyre has achieved an impressive level of insight in describing the lives of these everyday people for us, as they not only survive but explode into action under such an unimaginably extreme set of circumstances. I think our only regret as readers is that she waited so long to begin her writing career. When you read this work, you will be ever so thankful that you did, and that she eventually got around to it.
