The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

I feel like this is a book that will haunt me for a while. This was our book club selection for February and I loved it.

I have read a LOT of books about World War II and it makes you wonder how many stories are left to be told. But this one took a different approach and taught me some things I had never learned in a history class.

Vianne and Isabelle are French sisters who have led a difficult life. Their mother died when they were quite young, and their father, damaged from his time in WWI isn't able to care for them. They are sent from their life in Paris to live at a family home in the country. Vianne falls in love and marries quite young and Isabelle ends up bouncing around from school to school, a problem student who never seems to be able to find her place in life.

When WWII erupts, Vianne's husband leaves to fight, leaving her at home with their young daughter, Sophie. Isabelle gets kicked out of yet another school so her father sends her to live with Vianne to help during her husband's absence. Isabelle isn't satisfied with this and quickly joins a resistance group, trying to liberate France from Nazi occupation. She develops a plan that will help downed Allied airmen who have landed in France to escape over the Pyrenees to Spain where they can return home to take up the fight once again. She becomes known as the Nightingale and makes nearly 30 of these treks over the mountains to lead men to safety.

In the meantime, Vianne is left in the family home, with German soldiers billeting in her home against her will. Starving, cold, and alone, Vianne is forced to make some difficult decisions to protect her home and her family.

It is a beautiful story of how these women each found their strength in completely different ways. One jumped into dangerous decisions too quickly, the other acted out of a desperate desire to keep her loved ones safe.

I had never heard anything about downed airmen escaping over the mountains to safety. I've seen The Sound of Music, but I have read that the real story is a lot less exciting than portrayed in the movie and that there wasn't actually an escape over the mountains. But these escapes happened, lots of them. You can read a bit more about that here.

It is a beautiful book, full of pain, heartbreak and life-altering decisions. It is beautifully written and I highly recommend it.

The Girls by Emma Cline

Rob gave me this book for Christmas, and before I received it I hadn't heard a thing about it. I had somehow missed it on all the book blogs and sites I regularly follow. It had been recommended by Zoe Whittall, who wrote the other book he gave me for Christmas so he thought it would be a fun pairing. I like reading  books knowing absolutely nothing about the plot, so I didn't look up any information about the book before I started reading it. I thought it was going to be a book about girls understanding who they are and finding their place in the world. I didn't realize that would be happening in the context of the Charles Manson story.

This is the story of Evie Boyd, a 14-year old girl growing up in California in the summer of 1969. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mom, who is trying to rediscover herself as she re-enters the dating world. Evie also fights with her childhood best friend. Without her mom or her best friend, Evie finds herself drawn to a group of girls she sees in the park. She ends up joining these girls (led by the beautiful Suzanne) to a ranch where they all live together. The ranch is led by Russell, the charismatic leader. Evie gets caught up in life on the ranch, slowly leaving her life at home behind her. Throughout the book we also hear from Evie as a grown woman, looking back at her time on the ranch, her fascination with Suzanne and her desire to have been part of that group.

The book uses the story of Charles Manson and fictionalizes it, looking at it through the eyes of Evie. What made these people do what they did? Why didn't Evie join them? What is in her (or in all of us) to keep that from happening? What was missing in Suzanne and the others that caused them to kill innocent people?

The book was deeply disturbing in parts, but still quite fascinating. It was an interesting look into this horrifying story. I probably wouldn't have read it if I had known ahead of time that it was about Charles Manson, but in the end I'm glad I did read it.