When I bought this book, I thought it would contain harrowing tales of American spies and underground resistance fighters battling evil Nazi thugs throughout The City of Light. It doesn't. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, just not what I expected (and certainly not as captivating).
Roughly 30,000 American citizens lived in and around Paris before WWII. Of those, 5,000 ish decided to stay even after the US State Department told them it was time to 'get out of Dodge'. This book tells the stories of a handful of these people. They range from liberal lesbian book store owners (sadly, not as hot as they sound) who were used to entertaining the luminaries of the international literature scene, like Ernest Hemingway, to wealthy international businessmen of questionable morals, to displaced low level royalty. While the stories are interesting and insightful, they are hardly heart pounding nail bitters.
If you fancy yourself an amateur WWII historian you will definitely learn some things here that you didn't know (for me, it was how the Vichy government that they talk about in Casablanca actually worked). If you like your military literature to be heavy into body counts and exposed organs, you may want to skip this one.
Nats
