Nancy Wake had a life of many challenges. An ex-pat Australian in France before WWII, she talked her way into a job as a reporter for
the Hearst Newspapers. Wanting to get a first hand look at what was
happening in Germany, she and a photographer went to one of Hitler’s
rallies. The story she wrote got printed in the paper, but without
her by-line because she was a woman.
The romance in the
novel centers around her marriage to Henri Fiocca, a wealthy business
man. When Henri is pulled into the war, Nancy becomes a spy and
smuggles documents and people from France across the border to Spain.
When the Nazis identify her, she’s forced to flee the country and
leave Henri behind.
In England, she’s
recruited by the SOE, which leads to her being air dropped into
France to work with the Resistance. As Madame Andrée,
she becomes a famous leader of a group of Resistance fighters.
Nancy Wake was a
truly remarkable woman. The story is underpinned with in-depth
historical research, but as the author points out, it is a work of
fiction. This can be seen in the amount of time devoted to the
romance between Henri and Nancy, delicious, but not really
historically significant except for the fact that it drove her to
devote herself to becoming a spy and Resistance fighter.
The book is well
written and quite exciting to read. My only quibble is that the
author is constantly switching between one phase of Nancy’s life and another. I didn’t find the discontinuity too difficult to
follow, but it does detract from the narrative timeline.
I received this book
from Net Galley for this review.
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