Crossing the Line

Summary

In the Podgorze district of Krakow sits the Under the Eagle pharmacy, a family-run business that has long served Jews and Poles alike. Since Poland's occupation by German forces, Irena, a pharmacist, has watched and worried as the store's access to medications is reduced to a trickle. But now come rumors that there is more to fear than dwindling supplies.

A Jewish ghetto is under construction in Krakow, and Under the Eagle lies within its limits. Choosing to stay rather than move to the city's "Aryan" section, the pharmacy workers offer what medicine, food, and help they can to a population crammed into ever more desperate conditions. Among the ghetto's new residents is Natalia, once a medical student from a wealthy Jewish family. Securing a job at the pharmacy offers her a chance to do the work she has dreamed of and affords her loved ones some protection. Yet here, there can be no such thing as real safety.

For Elsa, a young German woman, recruitment to the SS was the only way to avoid jail after a betrayal. Assigned to the ghetto, she feels her convictions about the Fatherland crumbling. And restrictions and penalties grow worse, Irena, Natalia, and Elsa are drawn toward unexpected alliances—and decisions that could save or jeopardize not just their own lives, but the lives of countless others.