An evocative work of historical fiction, examining the little-known story of the extraordinary work of Poland’s resistance army and the contemporary lives of two artists, grandmother and granddaughter, which are inextricably entwined.

1939. Irena Marianowka’s dreams of attending art school in Paris are crushed when the Nazis invade Poland. Instead, she joins the Home Army and, together with her young husband, risks her life every day in the sewers of Warsaw. In 1944, after a harrowing mission, she returns home to learn that her sister, Lotta, has been abducted by the Gestapo. Determined to find her, Irena is willing to risk everything—all but the safety of her unit.

2011. Jo Blum lives in Toronto with her beloved grandmother, a lauded painter of WWII and a decorated war hero. Jo has a flourishing career creating sculptures for grave sites based on the life stories of her dying clients. Her recorded interviews with Stefan, her new Polish client, unveil a heroic wartime past eerily similar to her grandmother’s. But Jo’s quest to uncover the truth about Stefan and her grandmother opens an explosive Pandora’s box with shockwaves that threaten all she has known.

The Resistance Painter will resonate with fans of Woman with the Blue Star, The Book of Lost Names, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The German Girl, and The Dutch Wife, confronting the questions of the accuracy of the stories we tell about our lives and whether buried secrets stay buried.

A resident of Toronto, Kath Jonathan is a poetry, short story, and novel writer. Her work has been shortlisted for the Marina Nemat Award, a finalist for The Janice Colbert Poetry Award, longlisted for the Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for short story, published in a Penguin Random House chapbook and in online literary magazines. Kath holds a Certificate in creative writing and an MA in English literature, both from the University of Toronto.