The Nightengale

by Kristin Hannah

This book is the story of two French sisters and their resistance activities during WWII.

The girls' father returns from WWI a broken man.  When his wife dies he sends his daughters off to be cared for by another woman.  The girls are both devastated at the loss of their mother and the abandonment of their father.

When one of the daughters, Vianne, gets pregnant he is furious.  She marries her boyfriend and he sends his other daughter, Isabelle, to live with them.  The girls don't get along and the second daughter is sent to various boarding schools from which she gets expelled or runs away.

When the French surrender to the Germans the French hope things won't change much but pretty soon the Germans are taking over Paris, claiming homes, goods, and food.  The father sends Isabelle, who has once again been sent home from school, to live with her sister.

Soon the German presence is felt in the small village.  Vianne's husband is off fighting.  Her priority is to lie low and keep her daughter safe.  Isabelle wants to resist and starts distributing French resistance newsletters in the area.  Later she goes on to lead airmen who have been shot down over the Pyrenees and back to safety/freedom.  The Germans know she is called the Nightengale but don't realize she is a woman. They are trying to track her down.

Meantime Vianne is forced to let a German officer board with her.  The first one is a kind man.  He even tries to help her out by getting food and other items for her.  Vianne is asked to report jews and communists in the area and she is forced by her houseguest to name her neighbour.  The  woman is rounded up a short time later and Vianne takes on the woman's son, giving him a new Christian name.
When the German accidentally sees that Isabelle has attempted to save an allied pilot Vianne and Isabelle kill him.

The next German houseguest is a brute, he forces Vianne to have sex and threatens to hurt her children if she does not cooperate.

In the end Isabelle is reunited with her father and is surprised to find out he is preparing forged documents for jews.

Isabelle and her father are eventually captured.  Her father says he is the Nightengale and is executed.  Isabelle is sent to a concentration camp.  She survives the camp but contracts TB or pneumonia and dies shortly after she returns home.

Isabelle's son has just moved her into a senior's home.  He wants her to be safe.  He is shocked when he finds out she is going to France for a reunion.  He joins her on her trip.  The book ends with Isabelle telling her son (who is actually the product of the German's rape of her)
the story of her life... but not all of it.

This book was superb.  It was a great story and really gave you a sense of what life was like for the French during the war.