Her voice got through to him. He shook his head as if to clear it and lowered his knife. Isabelle ignored it. Automobiles were no better than walking anymore—the few that were still running were moving only at the whim of the people around them; like flotsam in the reeds of a muddy river.
At each town, the crowd thinned. They walked all day and fell into exhausted sleep in the dark and woke again to walk the next day. By their third day, Isabelle was numb with exhaustion. Oozing red blisters had formed between most of her toes and on the balls of her feet and every step was painful.
Dehydration gave her a terrible, pounding headache and hunger gnawed at her empty stomach. Dust clogged her throat and eyes and made her cough constantly. She stumbled past a freshly dug grave on the side of the road, marked by a crudely hammered- together wooden cross. Her shoe caught on something—a dead cat—and she staggered forward, almost falling to her knees. She clung to his hand, remained stubbornly upright. How much later was it that she heard something?
An hour? A day? They buzzed around her head; she batted them away. She licked her dried lips and thought of pleasant days in the garden, with bees buzzing about. Not bees. She knew that sound. She stopped, frowning. Her thoughts were addled. What had she been trying to remember? The droning grew louder, filling the air, and then the aeroplanes appeared, six or seven of them, looking like small crucifixes against the blue and cloudless sky.
The aeroplanes dropped lower over the crowd. The world became pure sound: the roar of the aeroplane engines, the rat-ta-ta-tat of machine-gun fire, the beat of her heart, people screaming. Bullets ate up the grass in rows, people screamed and cried out. Isabelle saw a woman fly into the air like a rag doll and hit the ground in a heap. Trees snapped in half and fell over, people yelled. Flames burst into existence. Smoke filled the air. And then … quiet.
She pushed the hair from her eyes and sat up. There were mangled bodies everywhere, and fires, and billowing black smoke. People were screaming, crying, dying. A stomach wound gaped through his ripped shirt; entrails bulged out of the torn flesh. And then she heard it again. The droning. She almost slipped in the blood-soaked grass. Not far away a bomb hit, exploding into fire.
Isabelle saw a toddler in soiled nappies standing by a dead woman, crying. She stumbled toward the toddler. She stumbled along beside him in a daze. They dodged discarded automobiles and bodies, most of which were ripped beyond repair, bleeding, bones sticking out through clothes.
Others were already there, crouching in corners, hiding amid the pews, hugging their loved ones close. Aeroplanes roared overhead, accompanied by the stuttering shriek of machine guns. The stained- glass window shattered; bits of colored glass clattered to the floor, slicing through skin on the way down. Timbers cracked, dust and stones fell. Bullets ran across the church, nailing arms and legs to the floor.
The altar exploded. Before its life as a school, the building had been stables for a rich landowner, and thus its U-shape design; the central courtyard had been a gathering place for carriages and tradesmen. It boasted gray stone walls, bright blue shutters, and wooden floors. The manor house, to which it had once been aligned, had been bombed in the Great War and never rebuilt. Like so many schools in the small towns in France, it stood on the far edge of town.
Children now carried them everywhere. The open windows and thick stone walls helped to keep the sun at bay, but still the heat was stifling.
Lord knew, it was hard enough to concentrate without the added burden of the heat. The news from Paris was terrible, terrifying. All anyone could talk about was the gloomy future and the shocking present: Germans in Paris.
The Maginot Line broken. French soldiers dead in trenches and running from the front. Isabelle was God-knew-where between Paris and Carriveau, and there had been no word from Antoine. The students were interested now, sitting upright, their eyes bright.
She had been as upset by the rumors as Vianne. The child had cried herself to sleep two nights in a row, worrying over her father. Sarah sat in the desk beside her best friend, looking equally fearful.
Losses along the way. But our men will never let the Germans win. We will never give up. We have to be brave and strong, too, and not believe the worst. We have to keep on with our lives so our fathers and brothers and … husbands have lives to come home to, oui? In an instant the war, the aeroplanes, the fear were forgotten. They were eight- and nine-year-olds freed at the end of a summer school day, and they acted like it.
Yelling, laughing, talking all at once, pushing one another aside, running for the door. Vianne was thankful for the bell. What did she know to say about dangers such as these?
She busied herself with ordinary tasks—gathering up the detritus that sixteen children left behind, banging chalk from the soft erasers, putting books away. Then she put on her straw hat, pinned it in place, and left her classroom. She walked down the quiet hallways, waving to colleagues who were still in their classrooms.
Several of the rooms were closed up now that the male teachers had been mobilized. Rachel had been planning to take this term off from teaching to stay home with Ari, but the war had changed all of that. Now, she had no choice but to bring her baby to work with her. The baby was sleeping soundly. Bitterness would do you good. All that smiling and pretending of yours would give me hives. A four- hundred-year-old stone fountain gurgled and dripped water in the center of the yard.
The girls responded immediately and fell into step ahead of the women, chattering constantly, their heads cocked together, their hands clasped. A second generation of best friends. They turned into an alleyway and came out on rue Victor Hugo, right in front of a bistro where old men sat on ironwork chairs, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and talking politics. Ahead of them, Vianne saw a haggard trio of women limping along, their clothes tattered, their faces yellow with dust.
The stories they bring are not good. According to Papa, Isabelle had left Paris days ago. With no money. She spent two nights in the woods and talked her way onto the train. The lost year, Antoine called it. That was how she thought of it, too. To this day, Vianne felt an abiding shame at how she had treated her baby sister.
Isabelle was tough and driven and determined; she always had been. I promise. Unless she has met an exiled prince and fallen desperately in love. Now come to my house for lemonade. She was too worried to relax. The silence in her house kept reminding her that no one had come to her door. She could not remain still. Vianne stood up, sat down, then stood again and walked to the front door, opening it. Outside, the fields lay beneath a purple and pink evening sky.
Her yard was a series of familiar shapes—well-tended apple trees stood protectively between the front door and the rose-and-vine- covered stone wall, beyond which lay the road to town and acres and acres of fields, studded here and there with thickets of narrow-trunked trees.
Off to the right was the deeper woods where she and Antoine had often sneaked off to be alone when they were younger. Where were they? Was he at the front? Was she walking from Paris? She needed to do something. Keep her mind on something else.
After retrieving her worn gardening gloves and stepping into the boots by the door, she made her way to the garden positioned on a flat patch of land between the shed and the barn. Potatoes, onions, carrots, broccoli, peas, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and radishes grew in its carefully tended beds.
On the hillside between the garden and the barn were the berries—raspberries and blackberries in carefully contained rows. She knelt down in the rich, black dirt and began pulling weeds. Early summer was usually a time of promise. Vianne always made sure that the beds were precisely organized and tended with a firm yet gentle hand. Even more important than what she gave her garden was what it gave her. In it, she found a sense of calm. She became aware of something wrong slowly, in pieces.
The odors came next: something wholly at odds with her sweet garden smell, something acrid and sharp that made her think of decay. Vianne wiped her forehead, aware that she was smearing black dirt across her skin, and stood up. Tucking her dirty gloves in the gaping hip pockets of her pants, she rose to her feet and moved toward her gate.
Before she reached it, a trio of women appeared, as if sculpted out of the shadows. They stood clumped together in the road just behind her gate.
An old woman, dressed in rags, held the others close to her—a young woman with a babe-in-arms and a teenaged girl who held an empty birdcage in one hand and a shovel in the other.
Each looked glassy-eyed and feverish; the young mother was clearly trembling. Their faces were dripping with sweat, their eyes were filled with defeat.
The old woman held out dirty, empty hands. Vianne opened the gate. Would you like to come in? Sit down, perhaps? She could see that the women were suffering from exhaustion and hunger. All that she had to spare. She filled a wine bottle with water and returned, offering them the provisions. The baby was dead. And then she saw the mass of black shapes moving across the field and coming up the road. The smell preceded them. Human sweat and filth and body odor.
As they neared, the miasma of black separated, peeled into forms. She saw people on the road and in the fields; walking, limping, coming toward her. Some were pushing bicycles or prams or dragging wagons. Dogs barked, babies cried.
There was coughing, throat clearing, whining. They came forward, through the field and up the road, relentlessly moving closer, pushing one another aside, their voices rising. She rushed into her house and locked the door behind her. Inside, she went from room to room, locking doors and closing shutters.
When she was finished, she stood in the living room, uncertain, her heart pounding. The house began to shake, just a little. The windows rattled, the shutters thumped against the stone exterior. Dust rained down from the exposed timbers of the ceiling.
Someone pounded on the front door. Vianne held her daughter close as the onslaught increased. Someone pounded on the side door. The copper pots and pans hanging in the kitchen clanged together, made a sound like church bells. She heard the high squealing of the outdoor pump. They were getting water. Sit on the divan. Taking an iron poker from the side of the fireplace, she crept cautiously up the stairs. From the safety of her bedroom, she peered out the window, careful to remain hidden.
There were dozens of people in her yard; mostly women and children, moving like a pack of hungry wolves. Their voices melded into a single desperate growl. Vianne backed away. So many people could break down doors and windows, even walls. Terrified, she went back downstairs, not breathing until she saw Sophie still safe on the divan. Vianne sat down beside her daughter and took her in her arms, letting Sophie curl up as if she were a much littler girl. A better mother, a stronger mother, would have had a story to tell right now, but Vianne was so afraid that her voice had gone completely.
All she could think was an endless, beginningless prayer. Her shoulders sagged. The blisters on her feet became unbearable. She heard it clatter brokenly and tilt sideways. Leaning into him, she stumbled up to the front door. She knocked twice, wincing each time her bloodied knuckles hit the wood. No one answered. She staggered back, almost sinking to her knees in defeat.
The pergola. In the lush, jasmine-perfumed shadows of the arbor, she collapsed to her knees. She hardly noticed that he was gone, and then he was back with some tepid water, which she gulped from his cupped hands.
Her stomach gnarled with hunger, sent an ache deep, deep inside of her. Still, when he started to leave again, she reached out for him, mumbled something, a plea not to be left alone, and he sank down beside her, putting out his arm for her to rest her head upon.
They lay side by side in the warm dirt, staring up through the black thicket of vines that looped around the timbers and cascaded to the ground. The heady aromas of jasmine and blooming roses and rich earth created a beautiful bower. He had hardly spoken since the bombing, and when he did his voice was clipped and curt.
They both knew more about war now, about what was coming. And my sister will not want me. Moonlight came through in lacy patterns, illuminating his eyes, his mouth, leaving his nose and chin in darkness. He looked different again, older already, in just these few days; careworn, angry.
He smelled of sweat and blood and mud and death, but she knew she smelled the same. She saved the lives of hundreds of Allied airmen in the Great War. Perhaps I am as mad and impetuous as they say. He looked at her as if she mattered. As you promised. This is serious. Trying to be nonchalant, she rolled back to face him and felt his breath on her eyelashes.
To seal our deal. Isabelle had traded kisses with boys as if they were pennies to be left on park benches and lost in chair cushions—meaningless. Never before, not once, had she really yearned for a kiss. At his kiss, something opened up inside the scraped, empty interior of her heart, unfurled.
Did I do something wrong? Trust me on this. She gave herself over to the sensations of the kiss, let it become the whole of her universe, and knew finally how it felt to be enough for someone. Somewhere a bird sang. She lay perfectly still in bed, listening.
Beside her Sophie snored and grumbled in her sleep. Vianne went to the window, lifting the blackout shade. In her yard, apple branches hung like broken arms from the trees; the gate hung sideways, two of its three hinges ripped out.
Across the road, the hayfield was flattened, the flowers crushed. Vianne went downstairs and cautiously opened the front door. Listening for noise—hearing none— she unlatched the lock and turned the knob. They had destroyed her garden, ripping up anything that looked edible, leaving broken stalks and mounds of dirt. Everything was ruined, gone. Feeling defeated, she walked around the house to the backyard, which had also been ravaged.
She was about to go back inside when she heard a sound. A mewling. Maybe a baby crying. There it was again. Had someone left an infant behind? She moved cautiously across the yard to the wooden pergola draped in roses and jasmine. Isabelle lay curled up on the ground, her dress ripped to shreds, her face cut up and bruised, her left eye swollen nearly shut, a piece of paper pinned to her bodice.
It is not my blood. He did. She guided her sister into the cool interior of the house, where Isabelle kicked off her blood-splattered shoes, let them crack into the wall and clatter to the floor. Bloody footprints followed them to the bathroom tucked beneath the stairs. While Vianne heated water and filled the bath, Isabelle sat on the floor, her legs splayed out, her feet discolored by blood, muttering to herself and wiping tears from her eyes, which turned to mud on her cheeks.
When the bath was ready, Vianne returned to Isabelle, gently undressing her. Isabelle was like a child, pliable, whimpering in pain.
Vianne unlaced the corseted midsection of the foundation and eased it off. Isabelle gritted her teeth and stepped into the tub. She helped Isabelle out of the tub and dried her body with a soft, white towel.
Isabelle stared at her, slack-jawed, blank-eyed. Vianne brought Isabelle a nightdress that smelled of lavender and rose water and helped her into it. Isabelle could hardly keep her eyes open as Vianne guided her to the upstairs bedroom and settled her beneath a light blanket. Isabelle was asleep before her head hit the pillow. She remembered daylight. Where was she? She sat up so quickly her head spun.
She took a few shallow breaths and then looked around. The upstairs bedroom at Le Jardin. Her old room. It did not give her a warm feeling. He had abandoned her after all; it filled her with the kind of bone-deep disappointment she knew so well.
Had she learned nothing in life? People left. She knew that. They especially left her. She dressed in the shapeless blue housedress Vianne had left draped across the foot of the bed. Then she went down the narrow, shallow-stepped stairs, holding on to the iron banister. Every pain-filled step felt like a triumph. Downstairs, the house was quiet except for the crackling, staticky sound of a radio on at a low volume. She was pretty sure Maurice Chevalier was singing a love song.
Vianne was in the kitchen, wearing a gingham apron over a pale yellow housedress. A floral scarf covered her hair. She was peeling potatoes with a paring knife. Behind her, a cast-iron pot made a cheery little bubbling sound. Vianne brought her a plate that was already prepared. A hunk of still- warm bread, a triangle of cheese, a smear of quince paste, and a few slices of ham.
Isabelle took the bread in her red, scraped-up hands, lifting it to her face, breathing in the yeasty smell. Her hands were shaking as she picked up a knife and slathered the bread with fruit and cheese. When she set down the knife it clattered. She picked up the bread and bit into it; the single best bite of food of her life. The hard crust of the bread, its pillow-soft interior, the buttery cheese, and the fruit all combined to make her practically swoon.
It was difficult to stop eating, even to be polite. She reached for a peach, felt its fuzzy ripeness in her hand, and bit into it. Juice dribbled down her chin. You remember my friend, Rachel? Vianne poured herself a tiny cup of espresso and brought it to the table, where she sat down. Isabelle burped and covered her mouth. No doubt she would hit me with a brick for that transgression. Her stomach hurt now; she felt like she might vomit.
She wiped her moist chin with her sleeve. But when has he ever done anything else? And they just … obliterated us. You spoke of him in your delirium. The scab ripped away and blood bubbled up. She pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her apron pocket. Dirty, bloody fingerprints ran across the paper.
On it was written: You are not ready. Isabelle felt the world drop out from under her. It was a ridiculous, girlish reaction, overblown, and she knew it, but still it hit her hard, wounded deep. He had wanted to take her with him until the kiss. Paris is overrun. The Nazis control the city. What is an eighteen- year-old girl to do about all of that? You must stay. Let me tell you what I saw out there. French troops running from the enemy. Nazis murdering innocents.
We will speak of it no more. I tried to be a mother to you. She clasped her hands to still their trembling. There was too much pain between them. She turned up the radio to drown out her thoughts. A voice crackled over the airwaves. She turned up the volume further. Vianne appeared beside her. Isabelle thumped the radio impatiently. I express to them my compassion and my solicitude. It is with a broken heart that I tell you today it is necessary to stop fighting.
Isabelle hobbled out of the room on her bloody feet and went into the backyard, needing air suddenly, unable to draw a decent breath.
To Hitler. When had Vianne come out here? He is a hero unparalleled. If he says we must quit fighting, we must. Isabelle yanked away. She limped around to face her sister. At least the war will be over and our men will come home. Isabelle tented a hand over her eyes and stared up into the bright and cloudless sky. How long would it be before all this blue was filled with German aeroplanes? She could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale—Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. I am the best of secret keepers.
I have sneaked onto trains and climbed out of windows and run away from convent dungeons. All of this because I can disappear. Sophie stared up at Isabelle, enraptured. Magic, to be its best, must be unexpected. And now, shall we play a game of checkers? A hero of the last war with Germany. Yes, he was old, but Vianne shared the belief that this only gave him a better perspective from which to judge their circumstances. It was true that the terms of this surrender were difficult: France had been divided into two zones.
The Occupied Zone—the northern half of the country and the coastal regions including Carriveau —was to be taken over and governed by the Nazis. Laundry soap: unobtainable. Ration cards could not be counted upon. Phone service became unreliable, as did the mail. The Nazis effectively cut off communication between cities and towns.
The only mail allowed was on official German postcards. But for Vianne, these were not the worst of the changes. Isabelle became impossible to live with. Several times since the surrender, while Vianne toiled to reconstruct and replant her garden and repair her damaged fruit trees, she had paused in her work and seen Isabelle standing at the gate staring up at the sky as if some dark and horrible thing were headed this way.
All Isabelle could talk about was the monstrosity of the Nazis and their determination to kill the French. Vianne dared not leave the two of them alone, and so today, like each of the previous days, she made them both come to town with her to see what their ration cards would get them. Isabelle had been complaining nearly that whole time. Apparently it made no sense to her that she should have to shop for food. The author brings her game A and gives us a mind-blowing story.
These characters are unique and refreshing. There are fabulous stand-alone set pieces, engaging characters, glorious prose and a soul-stirring look into the various lives of human. This is an immensely readable novel. The author way of developing the characters is impressive and her characters are well drawn and compelling.
Dora can't stop loving Nick, who is married to her best friend, Ruby. But Ruby is hiding a dark secret with the potential to destroy Ruby's marriage. Millie is anxious about her fiance, sent to Spain to cover the Civil War, and things get worse when a fortune teller gives her a sinister warning. With war looming in Europe, the three women face their own challenges, at work and in love.
Thirteen-year-old Anya sets out to find her missing father but instead travels to Kiev, where she meets the tsar, dines with a rabbi, and rescues two brothers from a dangerous monster lurking beneath the city. To hold on To let go Which road will you take? For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children's needs above her own, and it shows—her twins, Mia and Zach, are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close-knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude.
Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia's best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. Jude does everything to keep her kids out of harm's way. But senior year of high school tests them all. It's a dangerous, explosive season of drinking, driving, parties, and kids who want to let loose.
And then on a hot summer's night, one bad decision is made. In the blink of an eye, the Farraday family will be torn apart and Lexi will lose everything. In the years that follow, each must face the consequences of that single night and find a way to forget Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, Night Road raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness.
It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope. This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love. The total impact of the book will stay with you for days to come after it is finished. The Emperor of China loves to listen to the nightingale's song. One day he receives a mechanical bird that can sing.
He forgets about the nightingale. But what happens when the mechanical bird wears out and breaks? The famous and much-loved Danish author Hans Christian Andersen celebrated his anniversary the year Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Nightingale in Three very different girls sign up as student nurses in , while England is still mourning the death of George V.
Dora is a tough East Ender, driven by ambition, but also desperate to escape her squalid, overcrowded home and her abusive stepfather. Helen is the quiet one, a mystery to her fellow nurses, avoiding fun, gossip and the limelight.
In fact she is in the formidable shadow of her overbearing mother, who dominates every aspect of her life. Can a nursing career free Helen at last? The third of our heroines is naughty, rebellious Millie an aristocrat on the run from her conventional upper class life.
She is doomed to clash over and over again with terrifying Sister Hyde and to get into scrape after scrape especially where men are concerned.
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