The lost girls of Paris

On holidays in London in 2014 we regularly passed a small memorial to the men and women who had served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. When we returned home I wrote a post about the SOE in my Military History blog. A special group of men and women were trained to be smuggled into France to work with the partisans and relay information back to England. A large number did not return home.

Pam Jenoff has written a novel based on the experiences of a small group of women working north of Paris in 1944. The story is told from the viewpoint of three women - Marie who is one of the recruits to the S O E, Eleanor who manages the SOE women's section and Grace who, in 1946, discovers photos of a number of women who served in the SOE and endeavours to discover their story. Each of these women has encountered a tragedy in her life and is attempting to make a new, independent start. This fictional account of challenges, friendship, bravery and betrayal provides an understanding of another aspect of the Second World War that has largely been forgotten.

In notes at the end of the book the author gives the titles of two books on the role of women in the SOE:
A life in secrets: Vera Atkins and the missing agents of World War Two by Sarah Helm (2006)
The true story of the greatest female secret agent of World War Two by William Stevenson (2007).

There is also a series of discussion points for book club discussion at the end of the book.