The Girl from Provence
Lilou, a young beekeeper and seamstress in 1942 Provence, thinks her peaceful world, far from the horrors of the war, will never change, until German soldiers enter her village and carry off her friend Joseph and his mother because they are Jewish. Soon afterwards the Germans take her brother away to a forced labor camp. Determined not to let the Nazis destroy her village, Lilou joins a Resistance organization led by Marie-Madeleine, a society hostess she has worked for. She runs secret missions, meeting British pilots as they land by moonlight. Then she is asked to hide Eliot, a traumatized Jewish boy, at her farmhouse. He holds the key to a dangerous secret that could change the course of the war. Kristian, a Luftwaffe pilot, discovers Eliot while searching the house for Jews, but promises to keep the secret. He says he is anti-Hitler and was forced to fight, and Lilou feels attracted to him. But can she trust him?
Helen Fripp writes beautifully of the countryside in Provence, and Lilou is an unforgettable heroine: brave and determined to fight for what’s right. We feel her love for her home—the lavender fields, woods, and hills. Kristian appears sympathetic, but we, and Lilou, never forget he is a German soldier. I kept wondering how their romance would end up. I also loved the way Fripp includes the aviator/author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as a character. He is a friend of Marie-Madeleine, and Lilou and the members of the Resistance group use the unpublished manuscript of The Little Prince to decipher codes. Eliot has his own copy, with an extra chapter, and, along with Lilou, is fascinated by the planets and stars. Of course, this all ties in with the secret he is keeping. This is a wonderful World War II novel.
