I wasn’t sure at first whether this would be my kind of book since the protagonist, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, is a leader in the French Resistance in WWII, and war stories are usually not my favourite genre. However, the writing and character depiction is so powerful and enjoyable that I must say I not only read this book with great delight from cover to cover; I am now eager to try other Lawhon novels too, especially if they are all as great reading as this one!
We meet Nancy in Paris, an Australian who left home at sixteen, one of 6 children from a very poor family, who makes her way to France (via a lot of other interesting places). She is an undauntable woman, beautiful, sexy, compassionate and loving, fearless and straightforward, but intriguing, as the novel begins:
I have gone by many names. Some are real […] but most are carefully constructed personas to get me through checkpoints and across borders. They are lies scribbled on forged travel documents. Typed neatly in government files Splashed across wanted posters. My identity is an ever-shifting thing that adapts to the need at hand.
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Clearly this woman is much more than an average or ordinary person, and yet, for all her fluidity of identities, she is very much herself, fully and totally herself, able to act various parts at need, but she is unchangingly constant and true.
She is also intriguing from the start, as she prepares to parachute out of a plane into France, her priorities are not what the pilot expects: her partner has already jumped out and the dispatcher is waiting for Nancy:
““Why are you just sitting there? Go!”
“Wait!”
“No time! He’s out. You gotta go!”
I raise one palm and shove it at his face while I unbuckle myself with my other hand. He’s muttering profanities as I unzip my purse and dig through the contents, looking for my tube of Lizzie Arden lipstick. For once, I’m not concerned about my forged travel documents or the one million French francs neatly stacked inside. Nor do I double-check that I still have the list of targets that must, no matter what, be distributed once the Allied forces land in France. I am frantic to find that slender tube of courage. Victory Red. The colour of war and confidence and freedom.
When the dispatcher asks what she is doing, she replies,
“Putting on my armor.” And suddenly I am calm. Collected. I feel like myself once again.
Nancy stands, smacks her lips, belts her coat, and jumps.
And probably as Lawhon correctly calculates, this has me as a reader hooked – how could I not want to know more about a woman who is concerned about applying lipstick when she is about the jump from a plane for the first time (apart from training)?
This cool customer is our heroine, and she leads us through a fast-paced, exciting novel, but not one which puts you through an emotional wringer. On the contrary, we already have faith that whatever happens to her, Nancy will triumph in style, with her lipstick intact. She takes on the Brownshirts, French, British, German men from everywhere who assume they can intimidate a mere woman, and she does so without fuss, artifice, or attempting any moral high ground. She is direct, to the point, full of laughter and goodwill, and ready to fall in love.
And fall in love she does, with Henri, a man we know from the start, will become her husband. This is one of those novels which presents readers with a charming relationship and marriage, where the two parties are super compatible and happy in love, just a joy to read. Nancy is coached in French (language and manners) by a socialite called Stephanie, who teachers her how to curse, dance, do everything with great style – though it is Henri who teaches her the important skill of how to hold her drink. For Nancy is a woman who never says no to the offer of a drink, not even from her enemies. She is bold and forthright, but all woman.
We follow her through her work to smuggle people to safety out of France, to arm the French Resistance, to escape shootings and assassination attempts and to bring justice to a world in chaos. She is a leader effortlessly, and wins the respect of the men who either disdain her or want to bed her, or both simultaneously. She is also so good humoured and natural, on top of being witty and fun-loving, that it is impossible not to like Nancy and wish one had a friend just like that! It is a novel full of thrills and spills, well paced and endlessly riveting, and not traumatising for all that it is set in such a backdrop of war and fighting and killings. A superb read all in all, and a big thank you to my Courthouse Library bookclub for recommending this one.
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