Book Review: Sisters of Night and Fog

Synopsis:

Two women, two countries. Nothing in common but the courage to fight.

Sister of Night and Fog is based on the extraordinary true stories of an American socialite and a British secret agent whose stunning acts of courage collide in the darkest hours of WWII.

1940. In a world newly burning with war, and in spite of her American family’s wishes, Virginia D’Albert Lake decides to stay in occupied France with her French husband. She’s sure that if they keep their heads down they can survive. But is surviving enough?

Nineteen-year-old Violette Szabo has seen the Nazis’ evil up close and is desperate to fight them. She meets the man who’ll change her life, but when tragedy strikes, she is left adrift until she joins Britain’s clandestine war organization, the Special Operations Executive. A new fire is lit in Violette as she decides how much she’s willing to risk in order to enlist.

As Virginia and Violette navigate resistance, their choices set them on a collision course that will change their lives, and the world, forever.

Review:

Bestselling author Erika Robuck describes her latest work of historical fiction, Sisters of Night and Fog, as the story of “two remarkable women during World War II — an American who joins an Allied pilot escape network, and a Franco-British widow and mother who becomes a secret agent to avenge her losses. Their clandestine exploits with the Resistance come to a staggering halt when they are brought together and the true depths of their strength and courage revealed in the darkest of all places — Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women.”

Robuck set out to write a story about “a remarkable woman” and was conducting research for her previous book, The Invisible Woman, when she learned about Virginia D’Albert Lake and Violette Szabo. Initially, when a single volume proved too cumbersome, she envisioned three separate books about the women, but found that writing Violette’s story “hurt too much,” so she turned her attention to Virginia. In the process, however, Violette “kept poking her head in.” She “would not stop pursuing me,” Robuck recalls. She discovered an interview with Virginia during which she talked about being imprisoned at Ravensbrook with a woman who motivated her fellow prisoners to exercise to remain strong, distracted guards as they attempted to prey upon the weakest women, told jokes, planned escapes, and strove to keep morale up while the women waited for the Allies to finally liberate the camp and restore their freedom. That woman was Violette. Still, Robuck resisted writing about her. But she had three dreams during which Violette’s story “came alive,” including one in which Violette accused Robuck of abandoning her story. She begged Robuck to tell it because she was proud of what she did during World War II and wanted her memory to live on. Finally, Robuck relented because her research revealed that the two women’s stories converged and she realized that weaving them together “brought balance to each.” In Robuck’s estimation, Sisters of Night and Fog illustrates that “each of us has a vocation, and we cannot have peace until we become who we were meant to be.” Plainly, Robuck was meant to tell both Virginia’s and Violette’s stories, demonstrating that “none of us can operate alone.”

The book begins in 1995 with an elderly woman returning to Ravensbruck with some of the other women who made it out of the concentration camp alive at the end of World War II. They have returned to attend a remembrance ceremony. In her first-person narration, she describes how difficult it is to return to the place “about which I’ve barely uttered a word all these years — that almost destroyed me.” After that brief introduction, the story moves back to 1940-41 with Violette and her young brother, Dickie, escaping France where they have been visiting their aunt who frantically returns them to their parents in London. The Germans have already invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and are advancing on Paris, the city that Violette loves so dearly. She swears that she will return to France to fight the Nazis. Meanwhile, Virginia and her French husband, Philippe, watch refugees march through the village where his cavalry unit is stationed. Virginia has rejected her family’s pleas to return to the United States and safety, vowing to stay with her husband and “live only in the moment” with him. As Philippe heads to the front with his unit, Virginia and his mother begin a fraught journey to his family’s holiday home on the French coast, hoping they can shelter there.

In alternating chapters, Robuck relates the experiences of the two women as the war rages on. Back in London with her parents, Violette is not content to simply wait out the war. She is sickened by France’s surrender to Germany, under the terms of which the Germans will occupy a zone in the north while a new French government operates out of Vichy. She is restless and eager to serve. Just nineteen years old, she falls in love with a French soldier, Etienne, but their happiness is short-lived. He is transported to West Africa to fight while Virginia, and Philippe’s mother and grandmother, are forced from the family home into an adjacent farmer’s cottage by Nazis who occupy the main house on the family estate. Travel is restricted, food and supplies are rationed, and every aspect of their former life is stripped away by the conquering enemy as Virginia can only hope that Philippe is alive and will eventually return to her. Virginia struggles to hide her contempt from the soldiers with whom they must co-exist. Soon she undertakes a dangerous journey to meet Philippe in the Unoccupied Zone where he awaits demobilization since his and other cavalry units are being sent home. It’s only the first of many treacherous treks Virginia will make before the war finally ends.

Meanwhile, Violette works at the London telephonist station, but when the bombing begins, she and her coworkers take shelter underground. London is attacked mercilessly, “lit with fires” on a nightly basis. “Where buildings stood just minutes ago are great holes and mountains of smoking rubble.” And soon there’s only a crater where the telephone exchange building once stood.

Nuit et brouillard. Night and fog. In French, the words of the decree sound almost poetic. There’s nothing poetic, however, about Hitler’s order to arrest those who “threatened” German security and make us disappear without a trace. He thought it a fitting end for those of us who had operated in the shadows to undermine his demonic mission. Incarceration. Interrogation. Industry. Incineration. An efficient, insatiable war machine. In spite of Hitler’s decree, we didn’t all disappear. Some of us lived, and some even thrived.

Reunited with Virginia, Philippe avoids being forced to work for the Germans by obtaining a farming exemption. He and Virginia are safe at their remote cottage, but for how long? For Violette, bearing a child — a beautiful daughter she names Tania — without Etienne at her side is too much. She suffers from severe depression and is unprepared to meet the unrelenting needs of a newborn. Violette’s fractious relationship with her father, coupled with her pride, makes it difficult for her to accept help, but she finally relents and welcomes her mother’s assistance. Soon, though, she meets a man who will change her life by recruiting her and fulfilling her need to serve in the war effort.

As the war rages on, both Virginia and Violette become actively involved in the Resistance. Violette is determined to extract revenge upon the Germans who widowed her, leaving her to raise Tania without a father. She joins the Special Operations Executive (SEO), a far-flung network of operatives who engage in espionage and sabotaging the enemy. But before she an be dispatched on sensitive missions, she undergoes grueling training in Scotland. She learns to shoot, parachute, and survive brutal conditions, but opts not to accept the cyanide pill that every agent is offered — to be used in the event of capture in order to evade being tortured. Her dedication and fortitude are questioned and tested relentlessly, and her activities must be concealed from her family and friends. Fortunately, she has a dear friend who is willing to care for Tania while she claims to be serving with the First Aid Nursing Yoemanry.

Virginia also grows increasingly restless and, along with Philippe, joins a network of operatives who rescue, conceal, and transport Allied pilots who have been shot down, as well as Nazi fugitives. The Comet Line is an underground network spanning from Belgium to Spain that procures forged documents used to help pilots escape and be reunited with their regiments. Virginia and Philippe bravely take pilots into their home until the documents are prepared and arrangements made to escort them out of France. But as time passes, their missions grow increasingly dangerous as German spies pose as Allied pilots in order to infiltrate and dismantle the Comet Line.

Robuck seamlessly tells the tense tale of the women’s separate activities in a frank, straight-forward style that befits and enhances its overwhelming inherent power. But still the third-person narrative is imbued with compassion and poignancy, and Robuck believably brings each and every one of the multitude of characters to life. The fear and anguish of wartime is palpable, and Robuck describes the characters’ longing for life to return to some semblance of normalcy in an achingly plainspoken and relatable manner. Four years into the war, Virginia is aghast and exasperated, never having believed that it could drag on for so long, but her determination to save the pilots whose planes are shot out of the sky never wavers. “Her only regret is that she and Philippe took so long to start with the Resistance. If Virginia could have comprehended the utter joy they’d get from subverting the Nazis, she would have sought out ways to start sooner.” Her efforts bring her “a wellspring of peace” that carries her through “the most difficult and dangerous situations.”

Likewise, Violette loves her daughter, but cannot forget what the enemy took from her. She is insistent that she be sent on an extremely dangerous mission after Henri, a fellow agent she has come to deeply care for, is captured. Indeed, she discovers that the network has been destroyed, agents killed, and she is in grave danger. But she is intent on carrying out the mission. Violette never loses sight of what is at stake and remains ready to make the ultimate sacrifice should that be required of her.

One day Virginia encounters a pretty young woman at the train station “wearing a violet kerchief that matches her eyes.” She recognizes that young woman when she sees her again. By then, they are both prisoners. Robuck details how each woman makes a choice — a miscalculation that proves to be a fatal mistake — that results in her capture and curtails her underground activities. But it is rumored that the Allies have landed at Normandy and are advancing. They believe that soon the Nazis will be defeated, so they must endure unspeakable hardship and stay alive because liberation is imminent. But the horrors they witness and experience in the concentration camp are unimaginably terrifying and inhumane. Ironically, because the Germans know they are on the brink of losing the war, they are motivated to inflict indescribable suffering on their prisoners . . . and empty out the camps before the Allies reach them.

After their stories have unfolded, it is evident which one of the two women returns to Ravenbruck on that special day of remembrance forty years later. Tragically, only one of the women survived. And she bore the guilt of surviving, when so many did not. In the days following the war, she asked herself the same question that the rest of the world was asking. “How will we learn to live normally again? Is there any such thing?” No one who lived through that time was unchanged, but, as Robuck illustrates, those who survived found ways to rebuild their lives, even as they carried ghosts with them for the remainder of their days.

Sister of Night and Fog is a beautifully crafted, utterly riveting story based on the actual lives and contributions to victory made by Virginia and Violette. Robuck’s painstaking research is evident on every page of the book, and she was fortunate to connect with living family members and friends of Virginia and Violette whose reflections helped her bring the women to life on the pages. But the book is not easy to read and as the tale proceeds, it becomes apparent why Robuck at first resisted telling Violette’s story. Robuck has penned a tense, often heartbreaking, and unsparingly realistic portrayal of wartime atrocities. But she says, “I always have to have redemption. [The story] always has to give just a little nugget of hope. Once I find the crisis or the climax, I have to be able to write up to a new hope after that.” That’s precisely what she does.

What Virginia and Violette endured is deeply disturbing, but their story is one of bravery and courageous action in the face of the most despicable and evil campaign for supremacy the world has ever known. Virginia watched hundreds of women die in the camp, but she, along with Philippe, saved the lives of sixty-nine Allied pilots. Violette refused to give up information about the SEO and her colleagues, saving their lives. And as noted, she inspired her fellow prisoners to remain strong and hopeful that the Allies would soon fight their way to the camp and set them free. Robuck aptly observes that “ultimately, the courage of these women shines brighter than any darkness they faced.” And by crafting their story so meticulously and with quiet reverence, she has done justice to the women, their perseverance and spirit, their sacrifices, their humanity, and their legacies. Sisters of Night and Fog is a mesmerizing and towering work of historical fiction.

Excerpt from Sisters of Night and Fog

Pont-Remy, France

Violette

Violette is shaken awake, Tante Marguerite’s wild-eyed face inches from hers.

“Se réveiller!”

Disoriented, Violette feels a stab of panic. Did Tante discover what Violette did last night?

“Why so early?” Violette asks her aunt, keeping her voice as innocent as possible.

“For once in your eighteen years, Vi, obey,” says Tante. “Pack!”

Tante Marguerite hurries to wake Violette’s eight-year-old brother, Dickie.

With a sinking feeling, Violette realizes the day she’s been dreading has come. She and her little brother are being sent back to London.

The siblings have been staying in France with their mother’s sister to give Maman space to mourn their littlest brother, Harry, who died last year from diphtheria. Violette and the rest of her family had grieved Harry hard and fast, but even after months passed, Maman could barely tread water.

In spite of war making fire of the French horizon, Violette has no desire to return to London. France is her mother’s home and Violette’s dearest love. She’s spent every summer of her life here, and half her school years, and knows it’s where she belongs.

“I don’t want to go,” she says.

Ignoring her, Tante tells Dickie to dress at once.

Violette is about to argue, but the look of sheer terror on Tante’s face silences Violette. Her aunt is not one for hysterics.

Violette looks out the window and sees a flurry of motion on the street. Refugees pass, with trunks and valises and frightened children loaded on carts and on goats’ backs and whatever else they could find. A distant rumble calls Violette to action. She throws back her sheet and pulls their suitcases from the closet. She stuffs her clothing, toiletries, and magazines into one. As she heads for Dickie’s drawers to pack his suitcase, Tante grabs Violette’s arm.

“Une valise. And your passports. Hurry!”

Violette rolls her eyes but obeys, putting her and Dickie’s necessities into one suitcase and dressing as quickly as possible. While Tante leaves them and bangs around the kitchen, muttering about someone getting into the cupboard, Violette sneaks out of the house and to the shed. She pulls open the door and looks for her pilot, but he’s gone. She’d think she dreamt him if it weren’t for the heart he drew for her on the dirt floor.

Last night, Violette had snuck out for a midnight bicycle ride, when she’d stumbled across a Belgian pilot sleeping along a ravine. She’d poked him awake-scaring him half to death-and once he calmed, he explained he’d been shot down and lost his crew. He was trying to make his way to Spain so he could get to London and back in the air fighting Nazis. Violette had set him up in Tante’s garden shed with a blanket, half a loaf of bread, directions south, and prayers for his safe travels.

Violette touches her chest and sighs. Resolved, she hurries back to the house. Once she escorts Dickie safely back to London and places him in her mother’s arms, Violette will find a way back to France to do whatever she can to fight the Nazis.

If Violette stares at the gulls gliding overhead, she can remove herself from the chaos. She imagines looking down on the dock at Calais from a great height, from heaven.

Does it look like a pretty, breezy day, a single ship remaining on the quay, a line of merry travelers waiting to board? she thinks. Is this how it looks to God? Is that why he doesn’t help?

Dickie’s sweating hand jerks Violette back to where they stand among a mass of weary, frantic travelers. He sobs so hard he shudders for breath. He’s been crying since they dragged him from the house and pushed him on the crowded train. They had to walk the last kilometer of the journey because the tracks were blown out by the Luftwaffe.

A terrible growling sound starts. Violette again lifts her eyes to the sky. These are not gulls coming in, but Heinkel bombers, flying so low she can see the pilots. As soon as they’re overhead, the shooting begins. Great splashes erupt from the water, coming closer and closer, until the first blast hits the crowd along the dock. Luggage and limbs erupt in a red spray of fire and blood. Violette watches in shock, and her gaze finds a little girl of no more than five lying in the sand, whose dead glassy stare matches that of the dolly in her arms.

Violette feels as if a gun has gone off in her head. Though Dickie is almost as tall as she is, she lifts her little brother in her arms and races toward the dock. With Tante at Violette’s heels, they push through scores of French, Belgian, and Dutch refugees making for the last ship out at one o’clock. Violette and Dickie will be given preference because of their British citizenship, but they have to get to the Royal Navy destroyer first. If they miss the boat, Maman will never recover.

Tante keeps up with Violette, plowing a path through the crowd with the suitcase. Sweat soaks through Violette’s dress to her jacket. The voices around them are angry, scared, and speaking many languages. The sailors look panicked. They’ve stopped checking passports. With just a few yards to go, a gendarme in the French police closes the gates and locks them.

“No!” screams Tante.

At the barricade, Tante bangs the bars, begging, while Violette scans the fence for an opening through which she might squeeze Dickie.

As the next wave of bombers arrives, the crowd drops to the ground. Tante continues to beg, from her knees. When Violette sees the planes taking aim farther down the docks, she stands with Dickie and moves toward the gendarme and the remaining sailor. Dickie has stopped crying and stares blandly before him. Tante joins Violette.

“Please,” Tante says, grabbing Violette’s cheeks. “Look at my beautiful, British niece. Will you leave her to the filthy boches? Do you know what they’ll do to her?”

While the sailors pull off the lines, the gendarme looks from Violette to Dickie to the remaining sailor and back. Violette knows she can take care of herself, but Dickie is defenseless. Violette looks up, imploring the men with her large, violet eyes, the ones that inspired her name.

Please.

The gendarme looks back at the sailor and receives a curt nod. He unlocks the gate and pulls Violette and Dickie through.

Amid Tante’s crying and well-wishes and the angry shouts of the crowd, Violette runs to the ship with Dickie. She forgot their suitcase, but there’s no time to go back. A sailor helps them aboard, and when the one from the gate follows and they push off, Violette kisses him on both cheeks.

The passengers are instructed to go belowdecks, but Violette refuses. She won’t allow them to get trapped if the ship gets hit. She’ll swim back to shore with her brother if necessary.

The destroyer accelerates. The waters roil and churn. The wind blows. They’re not traveling straight, but in sharp zigzags, like a tacking sailboat.

As the bombers return, Violette covers her brother’s body with her own and prays as she never has.

Le Perray, France

Virginia

At dawn, a rumbling sound draws the American woman and her French husband out of bed, to the window. Buses file past the house where the couple are billeted. At first glance, the buses appear empty, but upon closer look, they can see the silhouettes of many small heads.

“Paris is sending away her children,” Virginia says, touching her stomach.

She hasn’t yet told Philippe her suspicion, and she doesn’t know how or when she will. Her cycle, which usually runs like clockwork, is four days late. They’ve longed for a baby since the moment they got married, three years ago, but knowing Philippe is about to join the fighting, Virginia thinks he’ll be crushed with worry. Not only that, with war erupting, her mother has been begging Virginia to return to the family home in Florida, but she refuses. If she’s expecting, she knows her argument will lose weight.

Philippe comes up behind his wife, wrapping her in his great arms.

“The poor bébés,” he says. “How has it come to this?”

Refugees have been on the march for days through the village where Philippe’s cavalry unit is stationed. The pair are in a lovely house on the main street, where an officer’s wife keeps them in a set of beautiful, well-equipped rooms. Virginia has been following Philippe and his men like a lamb from town to town, creeping toward the front. Both of them know she’ll be able to go only so far, but they refuse to face the truth. Until the river of weary refugees began running, Virginia could pretend she and Philippe were on a second honeymoon, touring French villages, enjoying each other in the growing warmth and lengthening days of spring. Right or wrong, they have resolved to live only in the moment. There’s no other way to live in war.

Virginia turns her back on the scene out the window and stands on tiptoe to kiss Philippe. Philippe’s late father was French, but his mother is British, and that side of the family is where he gets his height. Virginia presses herself into Philippe, noting the soreness in her breasts through her nightgown, wondering if she should tell him. It’s his thirty-first birthday, after all. The words are on her lips to share the news, when a banging at the door to the sitting room outside the bedroom makes them jump.

“Sergeant!” comes the voice. “Maréchal d’Albert-Lake?”

“Is it even six in the morning?” Virginia whispers.

Philippe hurries to pull on his uniform. While he buttons his shirt, Virginia grabs his blue cap with the red stripe from the nightstand. Philippe strides over to allow her to top him off, kisses her forehead, and rushes from the room, leaving the door slightly open in his haste. Virginia creeps across the floor and eavesdrops from the shadows.

“Why haven’t your men reported for duty?”

Virginia bristles, looking through the crack to see who berates her husband.

“My apologies,” says Philippe to a haggard general. “We were not told to expect you.”

“Everything’s falling apart. Men abandoning posts. Not enough uniforms or weapons. It’s pandemonium.”

Virginia is filled with dread.

“First, Poland,” the general says. “Now Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg. We’re next.”

Philippe leaves, and Virginia hurries back to the window to watch him escort his superior to the house where the region’s commander is staying. They soon disappear and, sure enough, in the slowly moving tide of refugees, there’s a sprinkling of soldiers. Filthy, shell-shocked, disoriented men are mixed throughout the throngs, moving away from the action.

“No,” she whispers.

Where are they going? If they aren’t fighting the enemy, what can this mean?

Virginia thinks of Philippe’s grandmother at the family estate in Pleurtuit, near Saint-Malo. His mother, in Paris. Their own Paris apartment, and the country house they’ve just had built, thirty miles north of the capital. They call their little love nest Les Baumées-balm, respite, sanctuary from the world-their happily ever after. Will Les Baumées be safe from the Nazis? Will any of them?

Of all times to get pregnant, she thinks.

She runs to the bathroom and gets sick.

Lighting a cigarette, Virginia forces a smile, trying hard to pay attention to Philippe’s words.

He updates her on news of the soldiers woven into the tapestry of refugees. The villagers have been giving them side glances and cold shoulders all day, but Philippe assures her the men are not deserters-not exactly. They got lost in the chaos of retreat. Their commanders abandoned them, and they’re trying to find units to join. Philippe has a good hold on his men here and will be able to assimilate the new arrivals. Virginia is relieved to hear it, but her mind is not entirely on war.

“Honeybee,” Philippe says, placing his large hand over her small one, where her fingers drum the table. “Are you all right? You haven’t touched a morsel.”

They celebrate Philippe’s birthday at Au Coq de Bruyre, a charming restaurant with outdoor seating at the town’s hotel. The stone walls are thick with climbing vines, and their plates are full of roasted chicken, lemon-rosemary potatoes, and asparagus, on which they’ve splurged knowing the days of such eating are likely coming to a close. The light of sunset saturates the village in lavender, but the beauty and serenity of the scene remain apart from Virginia. She feels as if she’s a black-and-white image on a painted canvas. Philippe stares at her a moment longer. Then he sets his brown eyes as stern as she’s ever seen them and throws his napkin on the table.

“That’s it,” he says. “As your husband, I order you to return to Florida.”

Virginia can’t help but giggle. It’s the first time she’s done so in days, and it releases untold tons of pressure from her chest. He jerks back as if she’s slapped him.

“I’ve allowed this American free will of yours to run rampant for too long,” he continues.

Her giggle has turned into a laugh.

“In France, women obey their husbands,” he says.

Amid her amusement, he throws up his hands and then crosses his arms over his chest, but a grin soon breaks the faux stone veneer he tried to put on his face. Virginia stubs out her cigarette and lays her hand over Philippe’s arm.

“That was adorable,” she says.

“I tried.” He shrugs.

“It was a good effort. But it isn’t war that’s made a bundle of nerves of me.”

“Then what is it? For the first time, there’s something between us I cannot access.”

She won’t keep the secret from Philippe any longer. Besides, maybe the news will inspire him with even more will to come back to her, if one can will such things in war. A lump forms in her throat, preventing her from speaking the words, so she takes his hand and lowers it to her belly. It takes him only a moment to understand. He pushes back from the table and lifts her into his arms.

Virginia regrets telling Philippe about her suspected condition. He was already worried about their impending separation; now he’s in agony.

Yesterday he saw Virginia picking flowers in the garden and begged her to lie down. Then he came upon Virginia polishing Madame’s silver and asked her to sit while attending to chores. Virginia doesn’t feel at all tired, and she hasn’t gotten sick since the day the general arrived to warn Philippe. If anything, she feels energized. She has new purpose-something to protect and fight for. It’s not as if she’s asked to drive ambulances like the women in uniform heading toward the front. Now she’s worried Philippe’s mind will be too much on her and the baby to attend to his duties.