Book Description
Fifty years after being rescued from the cellar of her parent’s bombed boulangerie in summer 1944 by Joseph, an old soldier, Rose-Marie receives notification from a French notaire that she has inherited his house. He insists she must view the derelict property before he can deal with it. She is terrified that the nightmares she has suppressed from her traumatic childhood will return if she goes to France. She begs her daughter, Laure, to meet the Notaire, view the house and locate her old school teacher, Britt Zeigler, if she is still alive. Britt can explain the reason for the inheritance and why Broussac was targeted for obliteration by the Das Reich Division.
Laure rents a house in the village of St Martial near Broussac, but the local people are suspicious of a young Australian woman asking questions about the war. Laure is confronted with malice and hatred in the nearby village of Villane-le-Foret. They say that her grandmother, Liliane, was denounced as a collaborator with the Germans and worked for the Resistance and was executed as a traitor.
Can Laure uncover the true story of her grandmother’s and mother’s lives in wartime France? Can she trace Britt Zeigler in a country that has a different history and language from Australia? Laure travels to the foothills of the Pyrenees and meets Britt, who confirms she and Liliane secretly worked for the French Resistance and rescued orphaned Parisian children. Amidst the lush countryside, it’s impossible for Laure to imagine the terrible impact of war, the lives lost and homes destroyed.
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