Riveting. Heart wrenching. Nellie is a photographer/reporter from America, anxious to make a difference and get the message to Americans about what was happening in the war Hitler had brought. The story starts as D-Day takes place. They didn't give permission to women to go into France, so she blended in and got herself there. The things she found once there were unthinkable, including a village where the Germans forced the women and children into a church and set them on fire. But she also found a little girl hiding, a girl with Down Syndrome. One that the Germans considered imperfect and needed extermination. She was able to get a perfect photo of her in front of the burned out church after the village was deserted again.
There she ran into Jean Paul, a member of the French resistance fresh out of prison. His father was a German officer who was angered that he stayed with his French mother and fought against him. Together they get to a convent where they housed a few other children with Down Syndrome and they all worked to get the small group out of France and across the border into Switzerland. Not an uneventful process. Constant danger and tension.
Both Nellie and Jean Paul are also fighting an internal battle from things in their own lives that motivate them to make a difference and not accept the way things were, not just stand by even though they risked their lives.
Excellent read of love and sacrifice with a Christian message throughout. Showing true beauty where others rejected, hope and love, innocence shining through. Often I didn't like Nellie because of stupid, headstrong choices that she made, but Jean Paul liked her (wink), and the end results turned out well.
I received this book free from the publisher and NetGalley book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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