Rose Justice is an eighteen year old American pilot who travels to England in 1944 and joins the Air Transport Auxiliary. Rose, a budding poet, is in love with words and exhilarated by flying, and she is thrilled when the chance comes to fly a transport plane to Paris. But on the return flight she disappears and is feared dead.
The story resumes eight months later in Paris, where Rose is writing down her traumatic experiences. Her plane went off course and was brought down by the Luftwaffe and she was sent to Ravensbruck as a political prisoner. She struggles to survive along with other women – mainly French, Polish and Russian – whom she befriends. Some of the details of the women's suffering are horrific and yet this is an uplifting story of the prisoners' determination to survive, using humour, ingenuity and courage. They have no means of writing, and Rose, as a writer, feels this keenly. The book is interspersed with poems, not only Rose's but Edna St Vincent Millay's. The women learn many poems by heart and memorise the names of the murdered prisoners; those who survive will tell the world.
This is a beautifully constructed novel about the resilience of the human spirit, and the poetry adds an extra dimension which lifts it out of the ordinary. It's a worthy successor to Code Name Verity. Although this is a stand alone novel and not a sequel, I would strongly advise reading Code Name Verity first.
• Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop.
Want to tell the world about a book you've read? Join the site and send us your review!
