The Lost Girls of Paris
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4.0 • 9 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the runaway bestseller The Orphan's Tale comes a remarkable story of friendship and courage centred around three women and a ring of female secret agents during World War II.
1946, Manhattan
One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs-each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station.
Grace soon learns that the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a network of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war. Twelve of these women were sent to Occupied Europe as couriers and radio operators to aid the resistance, but they never returned home, their fates a mystery. Setting out to learn the truth behind the women in the photographs, Grace finds herself drawn to a young mother turned agent named Marie, whose daring mission overseas reveals a remarkable story of friendship, valour and betrayal.
Vividly rendered and inspired by true events, New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff shines a light on the incredible heroics of the brave women of the war and weaves a mesmerising tale of courage, sisterhood and the great strength of women to survive in the hardest of circumstances.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jenoff's terrific, fast-paced novel follows a network of female WWII operatives in a smartly constructed narrative. In 1946 New York, young war widow Grace Healy stumbles upon a suitcase at Grand Central with photographs of 12 women inside. She follows a cold but irresistible trail through New York and Washington, D.C., determined to learn about the women and, in the novel's second story line, uncovers information about the girls' leader, the indomitable Eleanor Trigg: "Her style was brusque, unfeminine and unquestionably stern." Eleanor had recruited Marie Roux in 1943 for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to work with the French Resistance as an undercover radio operator. Marie's deployed to work in France with an intense, handsome circuit leader. As much as Marie often shows courage and pluck, some of her behaviors are misguided, including putting lives at risk for her budding romance when she pursues her own ideas rather than SOE orders regarding dangerous field operations. Despite Marie's sometimes dubious decisions, her colleagues in the field do show more guile as they fight in the Resistance, and Jenoff (The Kommandant's Girl) allows their distinct personalities to shine. This is a mesmerizing tale full of appealing characters, intrigue, suspense, and romance.