Bookish Thoughts: The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

If not for the second worst mistake of Grace Healey's life, she never would have found the suitcase. ~ Opening of Lost Girls of Paris

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

Park Row, 2019

Fiction/Historical; 384 pgs

Pam Jenoff has long been on my must read author list, and I was excited when offered the opportunity to read and review her latest, The Lost Girls of Paris. Women going undercover just at the beginning of World War II? I could not say no to that.

The novel is split between two time lines--that of 1946, where widowed Grace Healey is trying to re-build her life after the death of her husband during the war. On her way to work one day, an accident forces her to walk through Grand Central Terminal where she stumbles upon an abandoned suitcase. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she opens it, finding a dozen photographs of various women. Despite her better judgement, she takes the photos with her. It isn't until later she discovers the photos belonged to the now deceased Eleanor Trig, a British citizen with ties to the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The women featured in the photos are all missing, presumed dead. Grace sets out to find out the identity of the women and learn more about Eleanor. She gains help in an unexpected place, from a friend of her husband's.

Taking readers back to 1943, right before the war, Pam Jenoff introduces readers to Marie, a young mother who is recruited by Eleanor as a radio operator and special operative destined for Occupied Europe. Marie proves to be good at what she does despite both hers and Eleanor's initial reservations, but what awaits is danger and risk she never could imagine. Friendship, betrayal, and even love are the center of her story.

The Lost Girls of Paris was at times nail bitingly suspenseful and at other times heartbreaking--often both. The goal of the SOE was to sabotage the Germans in order to make it harder for them as they gained ground during the early part of World War II. It was a risk to add women to the mix, but the hope was their presence would be easier to hide than that of the British men who were already on  the ground in the occupied areas. Most of the men in authority were against the move, but desperation made it happen.

I was just as curious as Grace to find out what happened to the women. I thought it was interesting that the author chose two timelines that were so close together. It provided a nice juxtaposition between the time just before and after the war.

While many of the characters and events in Pam Jenoff's novel are pure fiction, the role women played during that time in the war was very real. For many years, women's roles have been downplayed or ignored, and I am grateful to authors like Jenoff who bring them into the limelight.

It was impossible not to get caught up in Eleanor and Marie's stories. They were both amazing women who proved that women should not be underestimated. If anything, I wish there had been more. I wanted to know more about all the characters, especially the women in the trenches, an even deeper delving into just who they were. Of course, with the way the novel played out, that might have been hard to do. The author would not want to reveal her hand to soon. Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed The Lost Girls of Paris. This was my first Pam Jenoff novel, but it will definitely not be my last. I cannot wait to read more b her.

Pam Jenoff was born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia. She attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Cambridge University in England. Upon receiving her master’s in history from Cambridge, she accepted an appointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The position provided a unique opportunity to witness and participate in operations at the most senior levels of government, including helping the families of the Pan Am Flight 103 victims secure their memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, observing recovery efforts at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing and attending ceremonies to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of World War II at sites such as Bastogne and Corregidor.

Following her work at the Pentagon, Pam moved to the State Department. In 1996 she was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland. It was during this period that Pam developed her expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. Working on matters such as preservation of Auschwitz and the restitution of Jewish property in Poland, Pam developed close relations with the surviving Jewish community.

Pam left the Foreign Service in 1998 to attend law school and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked for several years as a labor and employment attorney both at a firm and in-house in Philadelphia and now teaches law school at Rutgers.

Pam is the author of The Kommandant's Girl, which was an international bestseller and nominated for a Quill award, as well as The Winter Guest, The Diplomat's Wife, The Ambassador’s Daughter, Almost Home, A Hidden Affair and The Things We Cherished. She also authored a short story in the anthology Grand Central: Original Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three children.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

Connect with Pam

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

I hope you will check out what others had to say about The Lost Girls of Paris on the TLC Book Tours route!

Many thanks to the TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to be a part of this book tour.  Review copy provided by publisher for an honest review.

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