The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre

The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, Natasha Lester's gripping eighth novel, stitches together haute couture, international espionage and complicated emotions in post-World War II Paris. Alix St. Pierre, orphaned at age 13, has spent her life fitting, albeit uneasily, into American high society. She distinguishes herself during the war by doing excellent work in intelligence, but she's permanently haunted by one failed mission. As Alix works to help Christian Dior launch his fashion house in 1947, her wartime nemesis resurfaces, along with several other players from that mission. To capture her enemy and put her conscience to rest, Alix undertakes a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the man she knows only as La Voce.

Lester (The Riviera House; The Paris Secret; The Paris Seamstress) creates a razor-sharp heroine in Alix: brilliant, determined, often ruthless, but driven by a deep sense of justice. She exposes the sexism of the Office of Strategic Services and other government agencies during the war, while highlighting the contributions of working-class women who used their humble positions in society to great effect. In contrast, Lester also sweeps readers into the luxury of Dior's New Look, with sumptuous descriptions of both the gowns and the characters who populate the fashion house. No less compelling are her sharp renderings of wartime privation, including that of the Italian partisans whom Alix risks her career, repeatedly, to help. Shifting between three timelines--before, during and after the war--Lester weaves a heartbreaking, propulsive narrative of calculated risks, impossible choices and the faint, stubborn hope of redemption and love. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

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