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The Race for Paris

Review

The Race for Paris

Jane is a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv is an Associated Press photographer who was encouraged by her husband to come to France to document World War II. When the two meet at a field hospital in Normandy in 1944, it’s instant friendship, as though they had known each other all their lives. Jane has been at the hospital butting her head against regulations that restrict almost everything she can do as a female war correspondent. When Liv shows up --- pretty, pushy and determined --- that all changes.

"THE RACE FOR PARIS is an amazing story of friendship and courage, and Meg Waite Clayton paints such a poignant picture of these three individuals that I found myself holding my breath waiting for the inevitable to occur."

When a commanding officer denies Liv’s request for a jeep to go to the front, she convinces Jane to go AWOL with her. Their ideas of what a woman can and should do inside a war zone and at the front lines are distinctly different from not only their commanding officer, but also every man in the military. Jane and Liv leave with no plan in place but a goal of getting to Paris with the Allied army. They meet up with a military photographer named Fletcher, who reluctantly agrees to accompany them mostly because he’s sure they’ll be killed otherwise. They are trying to avoid not only German soldiers and bombs, but also military police who have orders to send them as far away from the front lines as possible.

In the push to reach Paris, Jane, Liv and Fletcher become more than reporters chasing and documenting a war. Their lives become so intertwined that when triumph and tragedy strike, it’s hard to know where one person begins and the other ends. Those ties aren’t severed by the liberation of Paris, either.

THE RACE FOR PARIS is an amazing story of friendship and courage, and Meg Waite Clayton paints such a poignant picture of these three individuals that I found myself holding my breath waiting for the inevitable to occur. There were pages that I didn’t want to turn because I knew there was more heartbreak to come, but I couldn’t help myself. I was far too invested in the novel by then and needed to know what happened to this trio.

I don’t read much fiction based on World War II, but this book is fascinating. I loved that the story was told from the perspective of two women whose experiences were vastly different from the men around them, yet they were doing the same job with the same risks. The novel is peppered throughout with quotes from female journalists such as Martha Gellhorn and Margaret Bourke-White and is based on some of their experiences during the war.

I started THE RACE FOR PARIS expecting heartbreak, which I found in abundance, but what I didn’t anticipate was an amazing story of friendship and determination. You’ll be left exhausted and battered at the end, but it will be so worth it.

Reviewed by Amy Gwiazdowski on August 13, 2015

The Race for Paris
by Meg Waite Clayton

  • Publication Date: August 16, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction
  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
  • ISBN-10: 0062354647
  • ISBN-13: 9780062354648