Marguerite Higgins faced off with armed Nazi soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp, stared down Gen. Douglas MacArthur and went behind enemy lines all to get a story.

Higgins may not be a household name, but she was a trailblazing war correspondent before women were a prescence on the battlefield. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Higgins died well before the Internet age, but her story is being told in Nathan Hale’s new graphic novel, “Cold War Correspondent.”

“I was looking for an interesting reporter character during the Korean War and that brought me immediately to Marguerite Higgins,” Hale said in a recent interview about the book.

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The author, who shares his name with the Continental Army soldier and spy from America’s Revolutionary War, has made a name for himself by writing and illustrating historical accounts for children in a series titled Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales.

“Cold War Correspondent” is the 11th book in the Hazardous Tales series, which takes readers into interesting points in the past — typically with a dose of humor added. Other Hazardous Tales books include the Donner party’s ill-fated expedition, World War I trench warfare and the Underground Railroad.

For the Korean War, however, Hale wanted to turn his attention to war reporters. It was the dramatic photos of Marguerite Higgins on the battlefield that sold Hale on the story.

“She had a lot of great energy that also felt like great cartoon energy,” he said.

Daring and dangerous with a healthy dose of swagger, Higgins dragged a large typewriter across war-ravaged landscapes during the conflict, and in the book, she looks pretty cool doing it in her aviator sunglasses.

“When I learned she was there at the start of the Korean War, saw the first three months of it unfold, and was trapped behind enemy lines, the book sort of wrote itself,” Hale said.

But by putting Higgins at the center of “Cold War Correspondent,” Hale got a unique entry into the Korean War and ensured her story wasn’t lost to history.

“When I was thinking about the Korean War, I thought, ‘How do I frame this?’” he said. “With each book, I try to come up with a new route into the story.”

His books often look at smaller moments within the huge events, and that’s one of his strengths according to one reader.

“It is so important to highlight lesser-known and minority figures in history, people and places that are not always taught in school,” said Loren Spector, a young adult librarian at the Memorial Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, whose specialty is graphic novels.

Spector said, in fact, it’s often the sidebar stories in textbooks that interest kids the most.

That sense of illuminating the lesser-known parts of history and telling them in an engaging way with his detailed drawings is what one local bookseller sees as the strength of the series.

“They’re’ so engaging and some of the histories that he (Hale) speaks to are neglected,” said Carrie Custer, the kids’ department manager at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

While the go-getter of the book is a perfect choice to lead an action-packed graphic novel, nothing about Marguerite Higgins is embellished. Hale researched the book by examining Higgins’ writings, biography and reporting.

“I had a pretty good idea of how she would speak and how she would talk,” he said.

For the year it takes to write and illustrate the book, Hale sticks to the facts. When the book is complete, it’s rigorously fact-checked.

“I don’t want to take these historical figures and make them characters, or say they did crazy things just to make a good story,” Hale said. “In some ways, I feel like a reporter, except I’m reporting it to you in cartoons.”

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