Avenue of Spies

August 10, 2015
WWII historian Kershaw (The Liberator) revisits the valorous actions of American surgeon Sumner Jackson who, along with his French wife, Toquette, and young son, Phillip, falsified the medical records of Allied pilots and troops at the American Hospital in Paris to aid them in escaping the Nazis. During the four years of German occupation, the Jackson residenceâwhich was located on the same avenue as the Gestapo headquartersâbecame a valuable conduit for French resistance fighters, who from the fall of 1940 had been pitted against the Nazi Schutzstaffel and their informers. Kershaw, using war documents and interviews with the aging Phillip, brilliantly captures the deadly cat-and-mouse game between Charles de Gaulle's underground and the Nazis and Vichy fascists. As the Gestapo infiltrate the resistance and discover its secrets, the Jacksons suffer the same fate as their friends, enduring the unspeakable torment of those they aided in the closing moments of the war. Kershaw's sobering look at a family's heroism in one of the history's darkest hours vividly shows what war costs in human terms.

June 1, 2015

When German forces marched into Paris in June 1940, many of Adolf Hitler's highest ranking officials quickly took up residence along Avenue Foch, the exclusive boulevard near the Arc de Triomphe. Despite the close proximity of prominent military and gestapo officers, American physician Sumner Jackson and his French wife, Toquette, carried out clandestine opposition activities at their nearby residence throughout the war years. From a hospital in Neuilly, Jackson smuggled downed airmen out of France. Meanwhile, from their home on Avenue Foch, Toquette and son Phillip provided a safe haven for members of the French Resistance. Based largely on personal interviews with Phillip, best-selling author Kershaw (The Bedford Boys; The Longest Winter) relates the remembered stories of one heroic family against the backdrop of larger world events. This book joins a growing number of accounts of life in France under Nazi occupation, including Ronald C. Rosbottom's When Paris Went Dark, Caroline Morehead's Village of Secrets, and Peter Grose's A Good Place To Hide. VERDICT Written with an engaging and expressive writing style, Kershaw's stirring tale of good and evil in the City of Light will have wide appeal.--Linda Frederiksen, Washington State Univ. Lib., Vancouver

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