Description de l’éditeur
From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen comes a thrilling World War II story of espionage and intrigue, as one girl races to crack a coded message to save her father and the French resistance.
Six hundred and fifty-seven days ago, Meg Kenyon's father left their home in France to fight for the Allies in World War II, and that was the last time Meg saw him. Recently, she heard he was being held prisoner by the Nazis, a terrible sentence from which Meg fears he'll never return. All she has left of him are the codes he placed in a jar for her to decipher, an affectionate game the two of them shared. But the codes are running low, and soon there'll be nothing left of Papa for Meg to hold on to at all.
Suddenly, an impossible chance to save her father falls into Meg's lap. After following a trail of blood in the snow, Meggie finds an injured British spy hiding in her grandmother's barn. Captain Stewart tells her that a family of German refugees must be guided across Nazi-occupied France to neutral Spain, whereupon one of them has promised to free Meg's father. Captain Stewart was meant to take that family on their journey, but too injured to complete the task himself, he offers it to Meg, along with a final code from Papa to help complete the mission -- perhaps the most important, and most difficult, riddle she's received yet.
As the Nazis flood Meg's village in fierce pursuit, she accepts the duty and begins the trek across France. Leading strangers through treacherous territory, Meg faces danger and uncertainty at every turn, all the while struggling to crack her father's code. The message, as she unravels it, reveals secrets costly enough to risk the mission and even her own life. Can Meg solve the puzzle, rescue the family, and save her father?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meg Kenyon and her British father have always shared a love of deciphering secret codes, so when he is called away from their home on the France-Germany border on a mysterious WWII mission with the Allies, he leaves a jarful of codes for her continued practice. Nearly two years after his departure, 12-year-old Meg and her French mother and grandmother are living under Nazi occupation on Grandmère's farm. Meg sells their produce on the black market and secretly works with the Resistance, leaving coded messages about the Nazis as warnings to other Resistance fighters. When she learns her father may be imprisoned, Meg goes on her own dangerous mission, secreting three German strangers out of France, one of whom has the power to rescue him. Nielsen (the Ascendance series) builds suspense through constantly shifting suspicions and loyalties, combined with the foursome's risky journey. Whom should Meg trust? Has she interpreted her father's recent coded letter correctly? Is she leading her group into or away from danger? Determined and stubborn Meg makes a believable—if occasionally two-dimensional—protagonist, and her story is well-paced and absorbing, with complicated plotting that rewards careful reading. Ages 8–12.
