Deauvenoy, 1939

MWSA Review

Author Davis Westwood has written a superb tale of intrigue and romance set in France at the outbreak of World War II. Historical Fiction lovers will be fascinated in the manner the author ties together a young, poor, auto mechanic destined to be in the French resistance and a wealthy, doctoral candidate assisting with the nascent French nuclear program. Westwood combines this main plot with two other storylines: the first being a US soldier arriving in Paris with the American troops five years later, and the second with a modern day couple traveling to Paris to find the rightful owner of an undelivered love letter written in 1939. I recommend this very well written book.

Reviewed by: Bob Doerr (2014)

Author's Summary

Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium and Norway have fallen to the Nazis. In Paris, the government quails before Hitler as France prepares, confusedly, to be next. Two citizens, at least, are determined to not give in — a rich physics undergraduate who works on atomic fission, and her working-class chauffeur who is falling in love with her. Each in their own way fights back, with some touching, some disastrous, results. In stark contrast to France’s predicament at the beginning of the war, interludes follow an American GI on his way to Paris in the wake of the D-Day invasion, almost five years later.