THE NIGHTINGALE, by Kristin Hannah, published by St. Martins Press in 2015. The book is set in France during WWII and is the story of two sisters, family, french resistance and German occupation of France. The book encompasses the whole time period of the war from the Germans breaking through the Maginot Line, which had been set in place after the Great Conflict or WWI. The sisters father served in WWI and came home a different man, lost his wife and turned to drink and sent his daughters far away from him. One daughter finds love and the other finds herself rebellious.
This story starts off in 1995 on the Oregon Coast with an older woman about to be moved into a nursing facility as a way to save her son Julien from taking care of her as she is dying. She goes to the attic and goes through an old trunk, which starts her on a journey of remembering the past and how her son really knows nothing about her. We quickly slide over to France 1939 and start the story of the two sisters. Once in awhile we go to the 1990's but for the most part the book is written from the past.
The two sisters are very different, Vianne the older sister, tries to be in control of her emotions, falling in love after being deserted by her father, getting pregnant at a young man and marrying him. Having no time for her baby sister, who handles this abandonment by her father by being rebellious and being sent to a boarding schools, as she keeps being kicked out because of her behavior, this is Isabelle. She has issues not only with her father but with Vianne, because Vianne is the second person to abandon her when she was just a small child.
Then the war presses in around them, Isabelle gets thrown out of another school at 18, goes home to her father who sends her to live with her sister after the Germans have broken through the Maginot Line, he sends her with a family headed that way but they run out of fuel and she has to set off on foot. She decides she need to get away from the mass exodus from Paris to the country and sets off in a different direction, running into a man named Gaeton. Who walks with her to her sisters house, with a promise that when they see that Vianne is okay, he would take her to the front with him.
While all this is going on Vianne is getting overrun by the people looking for food. She goes into hiding with her daughter locking all the doors, so she does not answer when her sister knocks. Starting off the reunion with bitter emotions from Isabelle the next morning, as she chastises her sister for having the door locked and being mad at Gaeton for abandoning her with a note pinned to her dress.
Okay enough of this or I will tell the whole story and Kristen Hannah does a much better job. This story is well written and it kept me guessing until the end on who the old woman was in the beginning of the book. The end of the book when the Germans realize that they might not win and start getting even more brutal is very graphic, so beware. The book takes its name from two sources on being the name of the person who take fallen air force members from the US and RAF across to safety using the Pyrenees mountains and the last name translated for the two girls. It is not only about relationships between the family and lovers, but relationships between occupied countries with their oppressors. How a whole country let atrocities happen because of fear and or gain, but not the whole country because there were resistance fighters and people who hid others in the face of danger to their own lives.
This book hits a variety of genres, mystery, history, romance, tragedy and a few more. A well written book, that took four days to read. I probably could have done it in two but other obligations got in the way and I sat up till 130 AM reading last night as I wanted to find out who was our woman. But as I said before the last chapters are pretty graphic, so reader beware. if I was to rate it with a five star system, it would receive all five stars.
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