Pilot Marshall Stone was grounded twice: first, at 23, crash-landing his B-17 bomber in January 1944 in a Belgian field; then at 60, the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots, reluctantly facing the end of his career. In her novel based on her father-in-law's World War II experiences, Bobbie Ann Mason (In Country, Feather Crowns) seamlessly travels between the soldier's crash and rescue and the 60-year-old's quest for details of that time and the heroes who saved him.
Stone returns to Europe and finds the résistance families who aided the Americans. Following a reunion in Belgium, he travels to Paris. "His stay with the Alberts in 1944 overlapped his visit now, as if he had jumped over time and might still be hiding behind an armoire or in a haystack with a cat.... he could almost believe the girl with the blue beret would be waiting when the train pulled into the station."
He does find the girl, Annette, then a teenager who slyly escorted him past Nazis and to a safe escape, and now a warm, generous widow who slowly reveals her story of those years. Together they transcend their war memories.
Mason deftly builds her novel; our affection for Stone grows as he responds to the stoic survivors who risked their lives for him, and Annette personifies the clever, brave résistance and their ordeal. Her research is apparent but never overbearing; the sense of place is palpable; and we feel Annette and Marshall's sorrow as the details surface, and their joy at the peace they come to savor. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller