The Girl From Normandy

 The Girl From Normandy

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       June 30, 2025

 

Author  Rachel Sweasey

Distributor:      Amazon
ISBN:                 978-1835331149
Publisher:         Boldwood Books
Release Date:   27 June 2025  

   Website:   https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Normandy-heartfelt-historical-Sweasey-ebook/dp/

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In a well-researched historic fiction, The Girl from Normandy from Rachel Sweasey takes a step back to a time when the world was a dark place, evil roamed throughout Europe in the form of Nazism and to be of the Jewish faith was a death sentence.

Marie-Claire and Benjamin Debois have just become parents welcoming their son Antoine into the world on the eve of Kristallnacht. They were concerned as Benjamin was of Jewish decent but hoped they would be all right.

1940 saw the German army invade and win Paris beginning their steady but systematic search for anyone of the Jewish faith, no matter how small. Deciding now was the time to leave Paris; they arrive at the station only to find the Germans there checking and rechecking everyone’s documents.

In a fleeting moment Benjamin is shot and killed by a German soldier, baby Antoine passed through a window to friends on the departing train and Marie-Claire left a widow. As she flees Paris to try and follow her son, she is caught up in an incident which will change her life forever as she learns to fight back and make a difference.

1998 sees Esther deciding to return to France, a place she loves and learned to love as a young teenager on a school trip. While there she met Joules Joubert, handsome, charming, the brother of Giselle her penfriend and fell instantly in love.

Returning to Normandy for the christening of Giselle’s second child they meet up once again and hope that what they had young teens has stood the test of time.

As both stories slowly come together Marie Claire, the grandmother of Giselle and Joules begins to slowly tell her family about the War years in Normandy and a little about the role she once played. A chance conversation with an old friend of Esther’s in Poole also helps the pages of time to a heartwarming conclusion.

Well written and constructed Rachel Sweasey brings to life the dangerous days of the French Resistance, the bravery of the people who fought and died and the life-changing circumstances face by many throughout Europe and Britain during World War 2.

Fiction, General, Historical