Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women

by Marlene Wagman-Geller Narrated by Hillary Huber

Overview

A thrilling journey into the badass women whose non-conventional lives left their DNA on history.



Amazing women with a story to tell. Join Mae West as she shakes up the entertainment industry with her wit and wisdom or create colorful art pieces with Yayoi Kusama that are larger than life itself. These women in history defied the expectations of conventional society to live the lives they chose, regardless of what others thought.



Words of Wisdom. Society may have labeled these fierce femmes as rebels, badass, wild, or uppity. But, these amazing women still dared to be different. With an out-of-the-box perspective, you'll find inspiration from an array of fabulous females who will give you a lesson in being one-of-a-kind.



Unabashed Women offers you: lessons on how to break the glass ceiling; biographies of trailblazing women from all walks of life; empowerment through famous females who dared to go against the grain; and discover the motivational women who found their voice and inspire you to do the same.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176202526
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

From the book:

“I was never afraid. I was too busy to be afraid.” Nancy Wake

The expression “quiet as a mouse” conjures an image of a timid rodent; however, during the dark days of the last World War, a woman known as the White Mouse possessed the roar of a lion.

In the twilight years of the twentieth century, patrons of London’s Stafford Hotel could have observed a ninety-something-year-old-woman throwing back the first of her day’s several gin and tonics. She had nostalgia for the establishment as in yesteryear it had been the bar where she had taken her first “bloody good drink.”

An unlikely heroine during the years when the swastika held sway, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake was born in a Wellington, New Zealand, shack, the youngest of six children. The Maori mid-wife who delivered her pronounced her a kahu, one who the gods would watch over.

The words rank hollow during Nancy’s childhood in which she shared a guerrilla relationship with her family with the exception of her adored father Charles. The Wakes moved to the suburb of Neutral Bay in Sydney, Australia; shortly afterwards, Charles went AWOL. At age sixteen, Nancy ran away from home and worked as a nurse near Mudgee, Australia.

A 200-pound inheritance from an aunt enabled Nancy to satisfy her wanderlust, and she travelled to New York, Paris, and London: She made France her home and, following in her journalist father’s footsteps, she worked for the Hearst newspaper chain who sent her to Vienna. In Austria she witnessed Nazi gangs beating Jews in the streets. The attacks led to her resolve, “If ever the opportunity arose, I would do everything I could to stop the Nazi involvement. My hatred of the Nazis was very, very deep.”

In the day Wake worked as a reporter, and in the night she frequented the city’s cabarets. Later Nancy recalled of her younger self that she loved nothing more than “a good drink and handsome men, especially French men.” And the French man she fell for was the wealthy, “charming, sexy, and amusing man,” Henri Fiocca. Despite his playboy reputation, she married him in 1939. The couple enjoyed a caviar and champagne lifestyle until Hitler’s army goose-stepped into France. Disgusted at the collaborators, Wake felt she needed to do more than take the role of the three proverbial monkeys, and she volunteered to drive an ambulance.

A chance meeting at a bar in the Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix in Marseille, France, provided a rebel woman with her cause. Nancy met Scotsman Captain Ian Garrow who enlisted her help with the escape of downed Allied airmen and desperate Jews. Her mission was to escort her charges to the base of the Pyrenees where other guides escorted them to the British Consulate in Barcelona. Henri and Nancy also provided their chalet at Névache, in the Alps, as a safe house in the Resistance’s version of the Underground Railway. With her beauty and scarlet lipstick, Nancy was the epitome of a femme fatale, one who was indeed fatal. Nancy said of her covet operation, “It was much easier for us, you know, to travel all over France. A woman could get out of a lot of trouble that a man could not.” Part of her ability to elude capture was because the Germans could not believe their Goliath was a slender, attractive woman.

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