One Last Shot: Based on a True Story of Wartime Heroism: The Story of Wartime Photographer Gerda Taro

Gr 9 Up–Wilson first learned of Gerda from a 2018 Google Doodle. While she insists “this is a novel, not a biography,” her fictionalized history in verse endows first-person intimacy to a remarkably accomplished, fiercely independent photojournalist whose career and, tragically, life, were truncated in 1937 while covering the Spanish Civil War. Gerda shares her German Jewish upbringing, her teenage anti-Nazi activism, her escape to Paris where she meets Jewish refugee André Friedmann—and their dual reinvention as Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. Wilson reunites with Goglia after 2022’s The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin; Goglia’s crisp enunciation too often ends in exaggerated -ts and -ds. Her German veers occasionally toward garbled, although she certainly earns kudos for recognizing artist Joan Miró with (rare) accurate Catalonian pronunciation.