Paris Undercover: A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship, and Betrayal

Goodman (The City Game: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team) skillfully recounts the heroic activities of two women in Nazi-occupied Paris who aided the escape of British and French soldiers after the fall of France in the first months of World War II. Goodman introduces readers to Etta Shiber, an American living in Paris with her friend, English divorcée Kate Bonnefous. When Germany’s invasion of France left both British and French servicemen stranded in the Occupied Zone, the resourceful Bonnefous began helping them escape—an act punishable by death. Shiber reluctantly aided Bonnefous’s efforts, and both women were arrested by the Gestapo in late 1940. Goodman follows Shiber through a serious of dismal prisons to her eventual release and return to the United States, then examines the circumstances surrounding the 1943 publication of her ghostwritten memoir, Paris Underground, the popularity of which had devastating consequences for Bonnefous. Goodman vividly reconstructs the women’s experiences amid the horrors of occupation and shows how wartime deprivation and despair can inspire both the noblest and basest of human impulses.