The Paris Peacemakers
Europe in 1919 is trying to heal, and so are two sisters, Corran and Stella. What does Corran’s specialty, the Greek and Latin classics she learned at Cambridge, even mean, now? Corran is going to Dieppe, to teach at a YMCA education centre for the troops. Stella and her Irish friend Lily experience the spontaneous celebration outside Buckingham Palace, the crowd baying for King George to share in their joy. In the crowd they meet American soldiers.
Stella is in Paris, among ‘the chic and the shattered’, here to work as a typist for international peace. She wants to ‘get the years back’ that war has stolen from them all. Their dead brother Jack is a subject neither sister wants to acknowledge. Corran’s fiancé Rob is a surgeon, clearing casualties in France. As well as catastrophic injuries, they face an outbreak of influenza.
The focus of this novel is both sad and uplifting. The damage and the desolation of war are well portrayed; we sense the characters striving to heave themselves and their world out of ruin. Even the Germans are helping. The descriptions of grief for Jack are emotional, the descriptions of wounds and amputations harrowing. Rob’s work is not only physically demanding, it requires huge strength of character—the mission to regain ‘dignity and self-belief after all they’ve been through’. At clubs playing American music, people are dancing ‘with a frenzy that was surely only this side of fun’.
The parallels with the Odyssey are gorgeous and remind us of the relentless march of history. I found courage in this story, the courage to create a new world out of a destroyed one. This may be a work of fiction, but we must never forget that all this really happened, as our world slides into relentless repeat.
