The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015)

I was not really ready to read another World War II book so soon after Follett's Winter of the World, but that is what came to me from Iskape Audio Books, so I went with it and was glad, as it just filled in more of my understanding of the war, this time set in France, which Follett did not touch.

I never thought about the fact that France was invaded by Germany at the very beginning, so when things get bad for the French people, I kept thinking - Oh no, there are years to go in this war, it will only get worse. I do not understand the mentality of invaders, especially in what I would call the modern age. How can you take food and supplies from the locals to the point of starving them - who supposedly will be your subjects eventually - don't you want them to be productive citizens of your empire? And the killing and imprisoning - beyond my comprehension.

The story focuses on two sisters - Isabelle and Vianne. Their father returns from WWI very changed, and when their mother dies, he sends them off to live with strangers. Vianne falls in love, marries Antoine, and lives in the family home out in the countryside. Isabelle is rebellious and ends up thrown out of various boarding schools. She is in Paris with her father when the Germans invade in 1940, but he sends her to stay with Vianne. She can't abide doing nothing, especially when a German officer moves in with them, so she starts working with the resistance and ends up helping British and American pilots to escape France over the Pyrenees into Spain. Follett mentions this too, one of his main characters gets saved this way. Thus Isabelle is known as the Nightingale.

We see a lot of characters around each of the women and how each of them copes with the war, including the concept that not all the Germans were all bad. Some did try to help the locals. Another term - French resistance - became clearer, and I can put it together with the resistance I read about in All the Light We Cannot See. It was a lot of people doing little things to resist the Germans. I am glad of this affirmation of spirit.

Hannah does not pull her punches in her books about the realities of war and other difficult situations. She really shows the deprivations felt by the French, the food rationing, the arrests, the demonization of Jews and their destruction. The scenes at the concentration camp were the hardest to get through, but I know that is the way things were. We just have to remember that the Russians were just as bad, both killing millions, and destroying the health and lives of many, many more.