The Lost Girls of Paris

Jenna Blum has written another fascinating historical novel.  I just finished reading the
The Lost Girls of Paris.  Again I have been able to learn something new while enjoying a compelling novel. I really appreciate the authors who are taking the history lessons that have remained undiscovered and bringing them to the forefront in an easily readable way.  Then we the readers should go and learn more about the topics after finishing these novels.

This time Blum takes us on a time travel back to the early days after World War II , in New York City.  We meet Grace Healey, a young woman getting back on her feet after the death of her husband.  She is escaping the memories and her family, taking an apartment in the city and finding a job working in a small office.  Day to day she is assisting families who have come to America get established with apartments, jobs and daily necessities after the war.

One day she walks through Grand Central train station and finding an abandoned suitcase, her life changes.  Finding pictures of young women in the suitcase she begins to uncover the mysterious disappearance of not only the person who owned the suitcase but of the girls whose pictures Grace has discovered.  At the same time she has reconnected with an old friend of her husband's who is a lawyer in Washington DC.  Grace is trying to work out her feelings for this man as he helps her uncover the truth about what happened during the war to these women.

Interspersed with Grace and her story is the back story of the British SOE special agents who were all young women, trained in Britain and sent to France joining the resistance fighters to spy on the Germans and send messages back to England.  They were trained in radio operations and combat then sent on dangerous missions without proper preparation or support.  As Grace is uncovering their stories and names we learn about,  Eleanor Trigg, who was the woman who was in charge of recruiting and training the secret agents.  We follow the stories of Josie and Marie who are trained and sent to join the Vesper team in Paris.  We learn of the fates of many of the women both real and imagined who were brave and courageous and who the Nazis tried to erase from history.

This is an incredible story of friendship, valor, and betrayal.  It shows how these heroic women had the strength to survive in the worst circumstances.  They put their mission first before their personal lives.