The Lost Girls of Paris
By Pam Jenoff
From the author of the runaway best seller The Orphan’s Tale comes a remarkable story of friendship and courage centered 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, valor, and betrayal.
Book Review by Josephine Berglund
Jenoff has created a dual plot novel that weaves the present search for the truth with the past lives of the female spies. This is a tale of three courageous women who risked their lives as secret agents in the SOE in France during World War II. They formed a complex bond of loyalty and friendship as they sent messages and contributed to the war effort. This novel directs a shining light into the darkness of an overlooked area of female spies who took just as many risks as their male counterparts. If the women knew that if they were caught, they could be killed and would not be spared because they were women.