When the Nazis invaded France and took over Paris on June 14, 1940, thousands of Parisians fled the city. Of those who remained, many joined the French Resistance, including André Boulloche and his two sisters, Christiane and Jacqueline. Charles Kaiser has written a highly detailed account of their acts of espionage during the four years of the occupation in The Cost of Courage, a story that has not been told in full until now.
The girls gave wrong directions to the Nazis to mislead them, carried weapons to Resistance fighters in their bicycle baskets, transmitted coded messages and narrowly escaped capture. André was even more daring and managed to avoid arrest on more than one occasion, ending up in Britain in 1943. He became the personal military delegate for Charles de Gaulle and returned to France to continue his underground fight against the Germans. Unfortunately, he was betrayed by a fellow Resistance fighter who had been tortured, and was seized by the Gestapo.
Kaiser has expertly interwoven historical facts about World War II--particularly what the British, Americans and French were doing to fight the Germans--with the personal narratives of the Boulloche family and of some of their closest friends to create a well-rounded, behind-the-scenes portrayal of their wartime lives. He does an excellent job of bringing readers right into the depths of anxiety and despair felt by the Boulloches and their countrymen as they did what they felt they had to do: fight for France's freedom. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer