The Underground Bakery
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley October 25, 2026
Author Gosia Nealon
Distributor: Amazon
ISBN: 978-1805506386
Publisher: Bookouture
Release Date: 19 October 2026
Website: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDTR1H4P
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The Underground Bakery from Gosia Nealon is a story that hits the emotions hard as it is set over the years of 2009 retrograde to 1943, a time when the world was at War, Hitler was starting to lose control and the Death Camps in both Germany and Poland were very active.
It is Poland 1943, and a young mother is hiding in a bakery which is being searched by the Germans. She is terrified, her baby cries; what will happen next is written into history, but history that has been firmly hidden, the door closed a very long time ago.
It is 2009 and Heidi is desperately pleading with her mother to go on the list for a heart transplant, but her mother is being particularly stubborn. She thinks she can find a way to get her mother to agree, by stepping back into the history of the family and discovering Grandma Nela’s past; a past that was never spoken of the only connection to Nela’s past was keeping her language alive,
An old, faded photograph provides the first clue to a family history that will see Heidi searching not just for the history of her grandmother and mother, but also beginning to discover who she is; more than a very young widow grieving for a lost love, a lost future.
Lodz, a City in Poland is the starting point which proves to be cataclysmic to both Heidi and the young man Olek, she meets as she enters the Bakery, the one in the picture taken so long ago. He is the nephew of Jacob, brother to the man in the picture with Nela taken in 1943.
Once he discovers why she is in Lodz, he is furious declaring Nela was a Nazi collaborator. Heidi is stunned but determined to keep on looking. Once Olek begins to accept the past must be researched to be able to finally close that section of both family histories, he agrees to work with Heidi.
A friendship begins to develop as he helps Heidi not only discover the town of her grandmother but cope with the horror that is revealed as they discover a document that explains so much, provides all the missing links, it also offers healing and understanding to two people who need both, Heidi and Olek.
Gosia Nealon gently reveals a history that was real, horrifying and destructive to so many, a history that took many families more than a lifetime to try to understand and accept; often that was never achieved.
The Underground Bakery is highly recommended reading for readers who enjoy Historic Fiction set in and around World War II. The Author Notes at the end of the book are a must read.
Note: The Lodz Ghetto was harsh, brutal and to survive was more of a miracle than anything else. Regularly children under 10 years old, the infirm and elderly people were shipped to the Death Camps. It was the most isolated, and longest operating ghetto in German occupied Poland but became a Labor camp for the Wehrmacht. Approximately 7,000 people survived from the 200,000 people who passed through the ghetto.