Book Review #The Paris Assignment #Lake Union Publishing #World War II Historical Fiction #Rhys Bowen

MY THOUGHTS AND BOOK REVIEW

France 1935: Madeleine Grant, a Londoner girl meets a communist young man Giles Martin at the end of her French literature study at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Making the most time in Paris being torn between wanting to be the dutiful student and the attraction she felt to Giles had ended up dating him at various Parisian cafes. Madeleine's mother died in the war and her father marries a war widow - Eleanor. Soon caught between Paris and excitement and Giles. They fell head over heels in love with each other and then they get married, out of their wedlock they have a son - Oliver Louis Martin. Giles starts after that and goes to work as a Journalist reporter at a newspaper in France as a rising star of the left wing as communism is what it represented. And then the inevitable happens in 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany.

There was a fear that Germany would invade France soon and be worse than the Great War. Worried about Madeleine and Oliver's safety Giles asks them to go back to England. As expected the Germans were pouring into the northeast of France. Giles decides to stay back in France to fight for his country. Madeleine finds a job when she moves to England as a teacher at a local secondary school. Madeleine felt hopeless as she thought Giles is doing some undercover resistance and wondered what chance of survival he might have. Oliver was not having an easy adjustment to life in England either as he have attended a French school until now. As the invasion of France is getting disastrous Madeleine heard nothing from Giles.
Bombs started falling in London in the autumn of 1940, there were air raid warnings and it was dangerous while the world shook in the muffled thump of falling bombs. They were terrified of the fierce bombings. 

Soon there arrived news that Oliver's train that he traveled was bombed and he goes missing, therefore Madeleine thinks her son - Oliver is killed and dead. After that, the war office meets Madeleine, offering her to work as a translator sending out spy messages - infiltrator of France. Madeleine gets arrested by the Gestapo when working at Fontainebleau as an undercover agent. She gets tortured and there was no escape for her. At the same time, Oliver is shipped to nuns and goes through horrible treatment in Australia.

I enjoyed Rhys Bowen's writing and research. I have always admired Rhys Bowen's novels. Madeleine travels from Paris to England and then to Australia in search of her enemies who tormented her. Her heroic courage and fearless character as a wife and a mother is being portrayed emotionally. There is heartbreak, bravery, and forgiveness knitted together in the storyline. A must-read for historical fiction readers.

Thanks to Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for an advance copy for my honest Review.

Book Description

A courageous wife, mother, and resister confronts the devastation of World War II in a heartbreaking and hopeful novel by the bestselling author of The Venice Sketchbook and The Tuscan Child.

Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France.

Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort. Seizing the smallest glimmer of hope of finding Giles alive, she returns to France. If Madeleine can stop just one Nazi, it will be the start of a valiant path of revenge.

Though her perseverance, defiance, and heart will be tested beyond imagining, no risk is too great for a brave wife and mother determined to fight and survive against inconceivable odds.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lake Union Publishing
• Publishing Date:  (August 8, 2023)
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 383 pages

                                                            About the Author       

Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of two historical mystery series as well as several internationally bestselling historical novels, two of which were nominated for Edgar Award

Rhys was born in Bath, England and educated at London University but now divides her time between California and Arizona. Her books have been nominated for every major mystery award and she has won twenty of them to date, including five Agathas.

She currently writes two historical mystery series, each very different in tone. The Molly Murphy mysteries feature an Irish immigrant woman in turn-of-the-century New York City. These books are multi-layered, complex stories with a strong sense of time and place and have won many awards including Agatha and Anthony. There are 19 books so far in this series plus three Kindle stories, Rhys’s daughter, Clare Broyles, now cowrites the series with her

Then there is Lady Georgie, She's 35th in line to the throne of England, but she's flat broke and struggling to survive in the Great Depression. These books are lighter and funnier than Molly's adventures. They poke gentle fun at the British class system--about which Rhys knows a lot, having married into an upper class family rather like Georgie's.

As a child Rhys spent time with relatives in Wales. Those childhood experiences colored her first mystery series, about Constable Evans in the mountains of Snowdonia.

Her books have been translated into over 30 languages