The Lost Girls of Paris: A Novel

It’s an unusual day for Grace Healey already when a detour sends her through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work. Making it more unusual, she stumbles across a suitcase, which she opens and finds a dozen photographs of a dozen different women. Something prompts her to take the photographs and leave quickly, the mystery of their identities and fates her new obsession.

Two years earlier in 1944, Marie is also having an unusual day. She is approached in a coffee shop, given an address, and whisked away to a remote location for training. She suddenly finds herself separated from her young daughter, acting as a covert operative and cooperating in a dangerous mission in Occupied Europe with D-Day looming.

And connecting it all, Eleanor Trigg, the woman with the suitcase, is the leader of these secret female agents and has been charged to protect them and discover the truth in the days following the war.

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff is a captivating tale of the Second World War and a remarkable ring of female spies who were lost in the last days of the war. Jenoff is a masterful storyteller, and the story remains riveting from beginning to end. Courage, friendship, love, sisterhood, search for truth–this story has it all. The characters and circumstances are compelling and moving, with enough twists and near-misses to make it a nail-biter. There’s even a love story thrown in to set things off perfectly. And yet it all reads fresh and original with some truly surprising choices from the characters. This is a wonderful work of fiction that shows the power of the human spirit even through atrocity.