Wow what an incredible story. We learn the history of these characters and what is different than what was released before.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC

Matthew Goodman’s “Paris Undercover” is both an absorbing nonfiction account of two middle-aged women’s courageous rescues of downed Allied fliers in World War II as well as something of a corrective of an earlier book attributed to one of the two women.
So courageous, indeed, were the two women, Etta Shiber, an American and the identified author of the earlier account, and Kitty Bonnefous, a British-French woman nine years her junior, that they were even compared to Edith Cavell, the British nurse who was executed by the Germans for helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium during the First World War.
Both women balked at the comparison, though, with Etta, the self-acknowledged less courageous of the two, insisting, “I am certainly not Edith Cavell,” though she allowed that the comparison might well be appropriate for Kitty, who so impressed the Germans at her trial that the presiding officer was given to expressly comment on her courage, the sort of courage that Etta saw as making appropriate the comparison to Edith Cavell.
Kitty was the one, after all, who first set the women on their course of rescue work when, in Etta’s account, after learning of a downed British officer at a French hospital and another more seriously wounded compatriot, she put together a plan to get the officers to safety by hiding them in the luggage compartment of her car. The compartment was small enough, though, that two trips were necessary, with the first going off without a hitch, but the second proving a scarier affair when two Nazi officers flagged down the women’s car seeking a ride and their weight in the back seat, which was over the luggage compartment, pressed enough on the more seriously injured man’s leg that it reopened his wound.
A gripping story, to be sure, the stuff of one of those old ’40s black-and-white spy movies (indeed, a movie was made of the women’s heroism), although as Goodman’s book notes, there are ways in which Etta’s account doesn’t square with archival accounts.
There’s no doubt, though, that both women showed great courage in their rescue efforts which would eventually become part of a vast network that would rescue more than eight thousand Allied servicemen and make for the women’s eventual arrest and trial by the Germans, who in fact ended up sentencing them both to death despite the presiding officer’s admiration of Kitty’s courage.
The sentences were later commuted to prison terms, though, with both women enduring freezing cells with only slim straw mattresses, and in Kitty’s case, having her fingernails pulled out and cigarettes put out on her arms. And just when salvation seemed at hand, with her camp liberated by Russians, the supposed liberators turned out to be worse in their way than the Germans, unleashing a spree of rape and terror that must have seemed, in Goodman’s description, a “visitation of hell of earth,” with one observer telling of a group of twenty soldiers standing in line to rape the corpse of an elderly woman, making for “the most horrible thing” he’d ever seen.
Meanwhile, Etta, who’d been imprisoned separately from Kitty and who’d suffered no small torments herself, was eventually able to make it back to New York, where, in the second part of Goodman’s book, the convoluted path to publication of her book is traced – a book which, with diffused authorship including another writer brought in to make for greater readability, had some authenticity issues.
All in all, though, an absorbing account of true courage, Goodman’s book, even if to my mind the amount of description was occasionally excessive – pages and pages, for instance, on the background of one of the men who assisted Etta and Kitty.

This was in many ways a fascinating true story about two very different women -- one American named Etta Shiber and one British named Kate (Kitty) Bonnfous, who meet, become friends and later, roommates in Paris during WWII. You would never think that this pair would become courageous members of the resistance, helping rescue French and British soldiers. hey are eventually captured by the Gestapo, and while Etta is lucky enough to return after 18 months in custody via a prisoner exchange. An interesting aspect to the book is that Etta wrote a memoir called "Paris Underground," hoping to bring Kitty's story to a wide audience and generate sympathy for getting her release.

Matthew Goodman's book, "Paris Undercover," expands on the Etta and Kitty's unbelievable story. How many unsung heroes of war get this well-deserved recognition of their bravery?

The reason I'm only giving it four stars is because the writing drags in big chunks, because of a lot of history without much dialogue. Still, I am glad to learn about this chapter in WWII history.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC and the opportunity to review this book.

This is the true story of two middle aged women ( one American and one English) living in Paris at the the time of the Nazi occupation. Etta Shiber and Kate Bonnefous find themselves establishing an escape route for British and French soldiers caught in occupied France. When the women are captured by the Gestapo, Etta receives a tree year sentence while Kate is sentenced to death. After the US enters the war, Etta finds herself back in the US as part of a prisoner exchange and is approached to write her memoir. Meanwhile, Kate is still in prison and suffers the consequences of her friend’s new book.

This was a hard book to read for several reasons. The courage and strength of the resisters is truly unbelievable and inspiring, no matter how much one reads on the subject. The story of these two ladies is one I had not heard before. The suffering and betrayal just made the whole story gut wrenching. These stories need to be told but sometimes they are just hard to read.

I really enjoyed learning about this event in the time-period. It had that research done well and was invested in the full story of this. Matthew Goodman wrote this perfectly and had that overall feel that I was looking for and was written perfectly for a history nonfiction book.

There are people you learn about from history who prompt a simple question. "Why bother writing fictional characters when you could just write about this person?" Dear readers, Kate "Kitty" Bonnefous is one of those people. She was courageous, wildly reckless at times, and above all, loyal to her own detriment. She helped numerous men escape Nazi clutches in World War II from Paris. She was also betrayed in one of the worst ways possible. Please have your outrage meter handy for the end of this book because holy moly...

Paris Undercover by Matthew Goodman dives into the story of Kitty and her best friend/flatmate Etta as they help these men escape. Kitty and Etta are far from professional spies, but you wouldn't know it based on the results. Goodman does a great job telling this story. It is broken up into three sections, Etta and Kitty's bios up until Etta's arrest, Etta's journey home and subsequent writing of her (almost) tell-all book on her experiences, and Kitty's path to freedom along with the aftermath.

I enjoyed Goodman's pace for the most part although it did drag slightly in parts, but this is a very minor issue and hardly frequent. There are a lot of characters, but they are balanced rather well and the descriptions of various prisons conjures the right level of horror. Especially for someone who doesn't read a lot of World War II spy books, I think this book is a perfect balance of story and history without being overwhelming. Give it a read!

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Ballantine Books.)