My French Whore

October 2, 2006
A simple, straight-faced love story about a brave coward and a scarlet woman drives actor Wilder's touching debut novel. (His memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger
, appeared last year.) It's 1918, and Paul Peachy, an unassuming train conductor and amateur actor in Milwaukee, finds his marriage has run out of steam, and decides to enlist as a dough boy. At nearly 30, Paul has seen little of the world, as his naïve and candid dispatches from the French trenches make clear. Paul, who speaks German, is brought in to interrogate notorious German spy Harry Stroller. Soon sent into the front line, Paul deserts and, in an extraordinary sequence, passes himself off as Harry Stroller. Taken to the local schloss
and treated like royalty by the German officials, Paul is given a French whore, Annie Breton, for comfort, and he gradually comes to care for her once she reveals herself to him more than physically. Despite some ensuing heroism, the game's soon up for Peachy, and the novel takes the form of the final, eloquent notebook of a man still finding out who he is.

March 1, 2007
In 1918, near the end of the Great War, Pvt. Paul Peachy, son of German immigrants, escapes a bad marriage by joining the army. Sent to France, he passes his 30th birthday in a wasteland of muddy trenches. That same day, he is asked to interrogate a captured German spy, Col. Harry Stroller, famous for his exploits in England. The next morning, Peachy sees his two best friends die in battle. In an act of cowardice, he flees into the nearby woods but is soon captured by German troops. To save himself from execution, he brashly impersonates Colonel Stroller, using what little information the spy revealed to him. Peachy's daring masquerade continues as he finds himself ensconced in Col. Viktor Steinig's headquarters. There, he meets and falls in love with Annie Breton, the titular French whore, while his situation grows ever more complicated. Written in prose distilled to its essence, this enchanting novella, Wilder's fiction debut, reads like a breeze. Outwardly sweet and simple, it has delightful complications and an ending that may surprise. Recommended for all public libraries. [The Academy Award-nominated actor is also the author of a memoir, "Kiss Me Like a Stranger".Ed.]Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

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