Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. Already emotionally estranged from her new family, Honor isn’t sure where her loyalties lie: to her husband’s family, her Quaker ideals or the ways of her happy English upbringing.Ĭhevalier’s grasp of history and nuanced detail is quite fine, but all of the blood and tears of the time are made polite and palatable, making quiet Honor’s story a bit too quiet. In 1850 England and America, Friends (another name for Quakers) are opposed to slavery, but in America, ideals are often compromised when the risk-imprisonment and bankruptcy-is so great. When her new family learns of Honor’s involvement, they are furious and insist she stop. Reed, a freed slave in neighboring Oberlin, a city filled with former slaves and Quakers.
When she sees runaway slaves hiding on the farm, she helps in meager ways but soon learns to send them to Mrs. Used to English town life, Honor finds that an American farm (and her disapproving mother-in-law) requires some getting used to. It is acknowledged by all that Honor must find a husband, and soon enough she does, a quiet dairy farmer. In Belle’s millenary shop, Honor recovers from her journey, is introduced to Belle’s brother Donovan, a slave hunter she feels an inexplicable connection to, and sees what she believes is Belle’s covert involvement in the Underground Railroad. Making her way alone to Adam Cox, Honor stays with Belle Mills, a rough, independent woman who takes pity on Honor.
On the crossing, Honor suffers from doubt and seasickness, and tragedy befalls Grace. Adventurous Grace is to marry fellow Quaker Adam Cox, an acquaintance from their hometown of Bridport, England. Chevalier’s latest historical fiction, the first set in her native America, circa 1850, is a tepid portrait of an English Quaker thrown into the tumult of Ohio’s Underground Railroad.Īfter the embarrassment of a broken engagement, Honor Bright decides to accompany her sister to America.
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