Paris Undercover

January 1, 2025
Two women who took on the Nazis.Paris-Underground, a 1943 bestseller, Book of the Month Club selection, and movie, describes two heroic women from the French Resistance. Journalist Goodman, author ofThe City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team, tells what really happened, preserving some heroism while adding some painful details. The women themselves were middle-aged (not, needless to say, in the movie). Prosperous and living quietly, they were as shocked as the world was at the Allies' sudden defeat in June 1940. Fleeing Paris along with several million others, they returned a few weeks later after the French surrender. Etta Shiber, the American author ofParis-Underground, was anxious not to make waves, but Kate Bonnefous, her assertive British companion, went to work. Already a Red Cross volunteer with a car and papers allowing free movement, she began visiting hospitals for injured Allied prisoners, purportedly to bring provisions but in fact to help them escape. Beginning in July she became a pioneer in a resistance organization that ultimately guided thousands of Allied servicemen across France and back to Britain. The women guided several dozen before their betrayal and arrest in November 1940. Sentenced to prison, Etta returned to the U.S. under an exchange in 1942. Kate received a death sentence, but it was commuted, and she survived the war, although barely. The final hundred pages describe their postwar lives while casting a gimlet eye on the accuracy of Shiber's book. Written by ghostwriters, it was heavily fictionalized, full of suspense and events that never took place. Sadly, Bonnefous, then a prisoner, wasn't fictionalized enough. Her thinly disguised name did not fool the Gestapo, who tortured her brutally in an attempt to get more information. The two never met after the war. Genuine heroism and well told, with no Hollywood ending.

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March 14, 2025

Goodman (The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team) skillfully recounts the heroic activities of two women in Nazi-occupied Paris who aided the escape of British and French soldiers after the fall of France in the first months of World War II. Goodman introduces readers to Etta Shiber, an American living in Paris with her friend, English divorc�e Kate Bonnefous. When Germany's invasion of France left both British and French servicemen stranded in the Occupied Zone, the resourceful Bonnefous began helping them escape--an act punishable by death. Shiber reluctantly aided Bonnefous's efforts, and both women were arrested by the Gestapo in late 1940. Goodman follows Shiber through a serious of dismal prisons to her eventual release and return to the United States, then examines the circumstances surrounding the 1943 publication of her ghostwritten memoir, Paris Underground, the popularity of which had devastating consequences for Bonnefous. Goodman vividly reconstructs the women's experiences amid the horrors of occupation and shows how wartime deprivation and despair can inspire both the noblest and basest of human impulses. VERDICT Beautifully written and thoroughly absorbing, Goodman's book is a must-read, particularly for those interested in lesser known aspects of World War II history.--Sara Shreve

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