★ 08/16/2021
Clayton (The Last Train to London ) expertly renders the story of a courageous American woman’s role in the French Resistance during WWII. In 1938, Naneé Gold lives in the company of Parisian writers and artists. When the Germans invade France, Naneé flees Paris with T, the wife of her “French brother,” Danny Bénédite, whom she had lived with while studying at the Sorbonne, and the Bénédites’ young son, Peterkin. Determined to help thwart the Nazi occupation, Naneé begins working with Varian Fry, who provides aid to refugees while secretly helping artists escape, and she later embarks on a mission to free photographer and artist Edouard Moss from an internment camp. As the war rages on, Naneé takes up residence at a villa in Marseilles with Danny, T, and Peterkin following Danny’s French military service. Naneé helps Edouard search for his daughter Luki, whom he sent to Paris before his internment. As Naneé and Edouard become lovers, the intensity of their romance is heightened by the ever-present dangers from the Germans. Clayton’s lyrical, thought-provoking prose breathes life into her characters. This sterling portrait of a complex woman stands head and shoulders above most contemporary WWII fiction. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Assoc. (Nov.)
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.” — San Francisco Chronicle
"A sweeping tale of perseverance and courage set against the backdrop of Nazi-era Europe, The Postmistress of Paris is the very best kind of historical fiction: a complex and intriguing story that both highlights a little-known moment in the past and resonates powerfully in the present, reminding us that bigotry can only be vanquished when people are willing to take a stand.” — Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
"I loved The Postmistress of Paris , a novel of so many layers - a suspense story, a love story, and a story about the purpose of art. Meg Waite Clayton is a brilliant and deft writer, and I rooted for her strong, witty and brave heroine on her pulse-pounding mission to save Jewish painters, intellectuals, and a motherless child from Vichy France." — Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of Eternal
"Widely esteemed for her previous World War II novels, Meg Waite Clayton triumphantly returns with The Postmistress of Paris , a story of one woman’s heroic quest to help the forgotten in Occupied France. Clayton’s immaculately researched and beautifully written tale of passage and courage and heart is her best work yet." — Pam Jenoff, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Woman With The Blue Star
“The work of an unsung heroine rises from the pages of The Postmistress of Paris . Meg Waite Clayton draws a vivid contrast between the beauty of art and the brutality of war, the power of humanity and the human cost of cruelty, greed, and prejudice. With a heart-stopping flight across war-torn Europe, this is a story readers of historical fiction and strong female characters will devour.” — Lisa Wingate, # 1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours
“Clayton expertly renders the story of a courageous American woman’s role in the French Resistance during WWII. . . . Clayton’s lyrical, thought-provoking prose breathes life into her characters. This sterling portrait of a complex woman stands head and shoulders above most contemporary WWII fiction.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.” — Booklist
"Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris ." — BookPage
“A true gem . . . and a testament to the power of good.” — Portia Kapraun, Library Journal (starred review)
A true gem . . . and a testament to the power of good.”
This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.”
"Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris ."
"Widely esteemed for her previous World War II novels, Meg Waite Clayton triumphantly returns with The Postmistress of Paris , a story of one woman’s heroic quest to help the forgotten in Occupied France. Clayton’s immaculately researched and beautifully written tale of passage and courage and heart is her best work yet."
The work of an unsung heroine rises from the pages of The Postmistress of Paris . Meg Waite Clayton draws a vivid contrast between the beauty of art and the brutality of war, the power of humanity and the human cost of cruelty, greed, and prejudice. With a heart-stopping flight across war-torn Europe, this is a story readers of historical fiction and strong female characters will devour.
"I loved The Postmistress of Paris , a novel of so many layers - a suspense story, a love story, and a story about the purpose of art. Meg Waite Clayton is a brilliant and deft writer, and I rooted for her strong, witty and brave heroine on her pulse-pounding mission to save Jewish painters, intellectuals, and a motherless child from Vichy France."
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.”
"A sweeping tale of perseverance and courage set against the backdrop of Nazi-era Europe, The Postmistress of Paris is the very best kind of historical fiction: a complex and intriguing story that both highlights a little-known moment in the past and resonates powerfully in the present, reminding us that bigotry can only be vanquished when people are willing to take a stand.
This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.”
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.”
Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris .
★ 11/01/2021
Clayton's (The Last Train to London ) compelling World War II novel is based on the real lives of American women in the French Resistance. Naneé Gold is an American heiress living among artists and intellectuals in Paris when the German army invades France. Instead of returning to the States (whose rules and expectations Naneé never seemed to live up to) she stays in France, determined to help the Resistance any way she can. Naneé moves to Marseille, where she helps Varian Fry smuggle artists out of France, delivers messages to those in hiding, and provides lodging and a legitimate cover to friends and other resisters. After going to great lengths to free photographer Édouard Moss from a concentration camp, Naneé begins to search for his young daughter Luki, and Édouard must decide whether to flee or stay and fight. VERDICT A true gem in an oversaturated category, and a testament to the power of good. Recommended for fans of Ariel Lawhon's Code Name Hélène or Martha Hall Kelly's Lilac Girls. —Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN
Soft-voiced Imani Jade Powers narrates the bulk of this novel set in Vichy, France. She is especially skilled at capturing nerve-wracking narrow escapes. Indomitable, gutsy American heiress Naneé Gold, portrayed alternately as a lighthearted socialite and a cautious spy, serves as “postmistress” to the French Resistance, delivering messages to artists and writers hiding from the Nazis. In contrast, Graham Halstead adopts a gritty, sometimes sorrowful voice for surrealist Jewish photographer Edouard Moss who, having escaped from a Nazi work camp, dreams of a reunion with his 5-year-old daughter and escape from France. Powers and Halstead fluidly shift from English to French and other European accents while emotionally depicting intense scenes of Nazi encounters. The tension is broken when Powers shifts to descriptions of somewhat normal life in Nanée’s villa in Marseilles. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
Soft-voiced Imani Jade Powers narrates the bulk of this novel set in Vichy, France. She is especially skilled at capturing nerve-wracking narrow escapes. Indomitable, gutsy American heiress Naneé Gold, portrayed alternately as a lighthearted socialite and a cautious spy, serves as “postmistress” to the French Resistance, delivering messages to artists and writers hiding from the Nazis. In contrast, Graham Halstead adopts a gritty, sometimes sorrowful voice for surrealist Jewish photographer Edouard Moss who, having escaped from a Nazi work camp, dreams of a reunion with his 5-year-old daughter and escape from France. Powers and Halstead fluidly shift from English to French and other European accents while emotionally depicting intense scenes of Nazi encounters. The tension is broken when Powers shifts to descriptions of somewhat normal life in Nanée’s villa in Marseilles. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
2021-09-15
Mary Jayne Gold, an American heiress who worked to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France, has inspired Clayton’s spirited reimagining of those turbulent years, centered on the intrepid Nanée Gold—she can fly a plane!—and the handsome photojournalist Edouard Moss, a widower with an impossibly adorable young daughter. While Nanée and Edouard are fictional, Clayton embeds them in a world of real people: Marc Chagall, incredulous that his own government would turn against him; Pablo Picasso, who refused to leave Paris; Leonora Carrington, who comes to a gathering at Nanée’s Paris apartment; Lion Feuchtwanger, Hans Bellmer, and Max Ernst, among many others imprisoned at the Camp des Milles internment camp; and André Breton and his wife, Jacqueline, who hold a salon in the Villa Air-Bel, a safe house secured and paid for by Nanée, where fellow surrealists distract themselves in talk, dancing, and games. Although friends urge Nanée to go home, she has no interest in returning to a vacuous life as a socialite; instead, she insists, she “wanted to do something to help, the same as any decent person in this newly terrible world surely must.” Her chance comes in 1940, with the arrival of Varian Fry, sent by the American Emergency Rescue Committee to facilitate the escape of some 200 painters, composers, and writers in danger of Nazi persecution. Fry, realizing the benefit of Naneé’s willingness and wealth, makes her a courier—a postmistress—delivering messages throughout Paris. The plot thickens when Nanée becomes infatuated with Moss, who has been sent to Camp des Milles. Dressed in a couture suit, wearing diamonds and a dab of Chanel No. 5, Naneé devises her own mission to get him out. As their love affair intensifies, so do their desperate efforts to find Moss’ daughter and, somehow, survive the ominous world of war.
Sympathetic characters propel a tense narrative.
