Dragonfly

 Dragonfly by Leila Meacham 576 pages

Fiction writing 101: The author needs to know her/his character(s) like the back of her/his hand in order to know which details to leave in and which to leave in. Most of the time, readers never know the character(s) that in depth. But author Leila Macham put everything in this book. Often, putting in everything doesn’t work, but here it does. This is the first of hers (this is her eighth novel) that I have read, and I wonder if all her work is this detailed. Guess I’ll have to do a little research.

In 1942 America, five twenty-somethings receive a letter from the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] (forerunner to today’s CIA) asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. Note: This is not a draft notice.  They come from different parts of the country and have different careers. Yet, all are willing, especially after Pearl Harbor, to do their part.

The three men and two women have been carefully selected and report to “the man in brown.” Once they accept, they are given an OSS code name and a working name. Their operation is assigned the code name “Dragonfly.” Then they are dropped in Occupied Paris and embedded among high-ranking Nazis. Thank heavens Meacham provide a Cast of Characters before the story even begins, otherwise I would have been lost.

They communicate via a mural that one of the women paints on a blank convent wall, with permission of course, and a secret drop box located nearby.

The novel is broken into four parts: “The Recruits,” where readers get a lot of background information on the intrepid spies. Then Part Two is “The Missions,” where readers learn the groups’ objective. Next is “The Game” (1942-1944), the young spies at work. To me this section is the best as it had most tension because more was at stake. The last is “Home” (June 1944 – September 1962). Readers are brought full circle with the recruits and learn the end of their stories.

All-in-all, this was a good book. Not great, but good. I found it interesting enough to keep reading, but I took me a good three weeks to finish it. Highly unusual for me. And that is why Dragonfly receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

 

Paris Never Leaves You

 

Paris Never Leaves You by Ellen Feldman  368 pages

Ages ago, I read author Ellen Feldman’s “Lucy,” and it was a wonderful read.  I’m sorry to say tht I haven’t read any of her five books since then, but I plan to rectify that soon. In this, her sixth, novel, Feldman deals with a form of PTSD as invoked by the title.  Charlotte can never forget what happened in Paris during the Nazi Occupation. Her daughter, Vivi, was barely a toddler, but the events of those extraordinary times also seem to prey on her.

The novel opens in Paris, in 1944. Charlotte and other Jews are ripping the stars from their clothing.  Paris had been liberated and with it the camps. But the opening scene turns frightful when an angry mob attacks a woman known as a collaborator.

The scene then shifts to New York, 1954 (I love dueling timeline!). Charlotte is a book editor at the prestigious  publishing house of Gibbon & Field. The “Field” is none other than Horace Field, one of Charlotte and Vivi’s sponsors, which allowed them to come to America.

A letter, not the first, has arrived at Charlotte’s desk. She’s on her way to a meeting and slips it into the trash. Readers don’t know who it is from and Charlotte’s apprehension regarding opening it foreshadows the fear she feels that her past is about to come for its revenge.

One of the things that I admired most about this novel was the seemless transition between Charlotte’s life as a bookseller in Occupied Paris to her contemporary circumstances without using chapter breaks.

In Paris, Charlotte is managing a bookstore with ther friend and the store owner, Simeone. Many think they are sisters, but they are not. One afternoon a Nazi officer comes into the bookstore, just browsing. Fear races through Charlotte’s veins, but she manages to stay calm.  That officer’s arrival will have implications in her life forever.

I don’t want to give too much away, and I was surpised that there was no synopsis on the book’s cover. But as Feldman weaves her story, she drops little bombshells ar just the right time to make this reader sit up straighter and stay up way past her bedtime. Even when I thought the book was going to plateau, another little bomb oes off, and I’m up even later. Therefore, “Paris Never Leaves You” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.