July Reviews Part 2 – Historical Fiction

Concept: Two young women–one American, one French–become distant partners to resist the Nazi regime during World War II. Ava Harper, a librarian at the Library of Congress, is chosen to move to Lisbon, Portugal to work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) because of her skills with microfilm and languages. She will work gathering news and information from official and resistance sources to send back to Washington, DC. Neutral Lisbon is a hub of refugees from German occupied areas and spies. Helene Belanger(Elaine Rousseau), a housewife in Lyon, France, becomes part of the French Resistance after her husband is arrested by the Germans for resistance activity, eventually helping produce one of the main resistance papers Ava collects. Both of their lives provide a view of wartime Europe.

Eventually, they end of working together unknowingly to smuggle a Jewish mother and child to Portugal and later to reunite with their husband/father in the United States. Their efforts to help others will profoundly change both of them. Told through Ava and Elaine’s voices in alternating chapters, this historical fiction is well worth the read.

“It appears to be a glimpse of heaven amid the hell of war,” Ava responded in French. (pg. 140)

My Take: Historical fiction set during World War II has captured my interest lately because of the many political and history voices in my feed discussing similarities between current US and 1930s Germany to create fascist totalitarianism. The primary takeaway when studying 1930s Germany and the Holocaust has always been how did Germans allow this to happen or how much did ordinary Germans know. Typically, we act as if we would never stand by and allow such authoritarianism and atrocities to occur. Resistance can happen on many levels as the characters show.

Elaine makes a decision to join the resistance despite her husband Joseph’s objections, not knowing he is trying to protect her because he is a member of the resistance. She eventually must face the full brutality of Nazi occupation from being arrested and interrogated to seeing the brutalized dead body of her friend. She still fights on.

Ava’s work is safer per se but not without risk. One of the historical aspects she shows us is that more is known about atrocities in Nazi-occupied areas, but refugees in Portugal face unrelenting bureaucratic obstacles to obtain visas to the United States or other safe countries. Her determination to save Sarah and Noah is successful but further highlights all the others she realizes she can’t save.

This novel shows the reader that resistance in all forms works to bring down authoritarianism and restore freedom.

She [Elaine] went to him and opened her arms. They held one another as their tears fell for the loved ones they could never bring back. For the pain of so much loss.
They had finally won, but the cost had been dear indeed. (pg. 358)

Recommendation: I would include this novel in my high school classroom library. The novel does include violence, specifically references to torture and murder by the Gestapo, and suicide. Otherwise, I feel it is relatively free of the usual material that prompts objections or challenges.

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