Two women find themselves working tirelessly against the Nazis as World War II sweeps Europe. In her seventh historical novel, Sisters of Night and Fog, Erika Robuck (The Invisible Woman) weaves a gripping tale of Virginia d'Albert-Lake, an American Resistance fighter married to a Frenchman, and Violette Szabo, a fiery young French-British widow-turned-spy.
Robuck begins the women's stories separately, detailing Virginia's idyllic existence with her loving French husband and scrappy Violette's struggles to find her place in a world at war. Both women eventually decide to take a larger role against Hitler's regime: Virginia and her husband join a Resistance network and begin harboring fugitive pilots, while Violette--widowed with a young daughter--trains as a British spy to be dropped into occupied France. The women first cross paths briefly at a railway station, but when they are later captured (separately) and sent to Ravensbrück, the Nazis' largest concentration camp for women, they become comrades and friends.
Framing her story with scenes from a return trip to the camps in 1995, Robuck drops her readers repeatedly into the vivid, chaotic and immediate reality of life in wartime Europe. Both women struggle with fear, grief and trauma, but neither is willing to give a single inch to Hitler and his lackeys, even at great peril to themselves. Robuck's narrative is an unflinching portrait of the Nazis' horrifying attempts to subdue Europe, but she paints an even more compelling picture of both women and their deep courage. Readers will be inspired and moved as they race to the last page. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams