Courage and betrayal in wartime Paris
Janet Skeslien Charles The Paris Library, Two Roads, £14.99
She was the unassuming head of The American Library in Occupied Paris who, with her loyal band of supporters, defied the Nazis to smuggle hundreds of books to Jewish readers and send thousands more to Allied soldiers and prisoners of war.
Now the extraordinary story of Miss Dorothy Reeder and her library has inspired the second novel to come from Janet Skeslien Charles, the awardwinning author of Moonlight In Odessa. Janet’s new work also features a French war bride who the American writer knew while growing up in Montana.
Little over 80 years since the Nazis seized the French capital, The Paris Library, laces fiction with fact in a refined and riveting tale of resistance and triumph, fear and courage, loss and love.
Janet – who has lived in Paris for 20 years – was a volunteer at The American Library before becoming its programs manager. Her beautifully written book was 10 years in the making.
The story opens in February, 1939, as the young Odile Souchet prepares for an interview with Miss Reeder and a dream job at the library. Fast forward to Montana, 1983, and Lily, a lonely and grieving, small town teenager, has formed a special bond with her elderly widowed neighbour, war bride Odile, who she discovers, is harbouring a dark secret.
The author tells P.S: “I started at The American Library in 2010. It has been a long journey. I am excited to come to the end of it and see the book in the hands of readers. I came to Paris in 1999 and no one talked about Miss Reeder. I was a library member early on and volunteer but never saw anything about her.”
Details emerged only when colleagues were preparing a display on the library’s role in the war.
The writer says: “It is really a shame that women’s stories are erased from war. I am keen for the world to learn about Miss Reeder and her courage. there were wonderful, amazing people at the library.”
Odile is representative of the bravery of all war brides. “i always wanted to write about a war bride,” Janet explains.
The influence was a neighbour who had left her home in France to come with her soldier husband to Montana. “Her name was Claudine and she was a lovely lady. I loved her lilting accent. In Montana at that time we didn’t have much from the outside world, I really enjoyed spending time with her. Sadly she passed away several years ago. She never even knew I was writing the book,” she reveals.
“I don’t know that a lot of her is in Odile, but I grew up with an awareness of how brave Claudine was as a war bride, like so many others leaving behind her friends, her family, her country, and her language, potentially with no hope of going back. I wanted to write about that bravery.”
Like Claudine, the real-life characters of the library are no longer with us. In many ways, the writer, a colleague they never met, has immortalised them.
Their trials and the parallels to emerge from the Covid pandemic are not lost on Janet.
She says: “i am stunned by the world today. We don’t know what is going to happen, and are looking to our leaders who are disappointing us, just like they did before the war.”
But she is buoyed by her awe of the war time staff and volunteers at The American Library.
She tells P.S: “I am hoping others will read about them and be heartened by their courage and find solace in their stories.”