The Cost of Courage

April 13, 2015
Kaiser (1968 in America), a former New York Times reporter, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private letters in this vivid family portrait that examines four siblings’ heroic contribution to the French resistance of WWII. Prior to the war, the Boulloche family enjoyed a liberal, bourgeois Parisian life. But in 1940 their son Andre, a dashing 24-year-old lieutenant stationed in Algeria, committed to “join the secret war against the Germans,” and soon his brother and sisters followed suit. Four years later Andre—pseudonym: Armand; codename: Hypotenuse—was handpicked by General De Gaulle to organize those in the Resistance known as the “Maquis.” Kaiser opens with Andre’s 1944 arrest by the Gestapo, retracing his transformation from highway engineer to secret agent. Rather than swallowing his cyanide pill, Andre becomes a “leader of his fellow prisoners” and is sent to a concentration camp. The Gestapo searches for his sister Christiane, a hero in her own right, but when the search proves unsuccessful, they seize and condemn her parents and older brother. Part two follows the family’s postwar rebuilding as Andre, who briefly served in De Gaulle’s cabinet, becomes a spokesman for the Socialist party. Kaiser’s use of Andre’s first-person narration can be distracting, but otherwise this is a riveting paean to unsung war heroes in occupied France.

Starred review from April 15, 2015
A former reporter and award-winning author rescues the almost unbelievable account of one family's experience in Nazi-occupied France. Between the cruel caricature of a nation of collaborators and the purposeful, Charles de Gaulle-promoted myth of a country full of valiant resisters lies the truth for most of the French during World War II. In the same manner a young girl's diary once vivified the Holocaust and the fate of 6 million for a postwar audience, Kaiser (The Gay Metropolis: 1940-1996, 1997, etc.) tells, through the Boulloche family, the story of lives turned complicated by the bizarre realities of Vichy France. He fills us in first on the toll World War I took on France, on the Boulloche family pedigree, and on the iconoclastic, republican spirit of the parents, Jacques and Helene. Although by no means pro-German and for honorable reasons of their own, neither they nor their oldest son joined the Resistance. Nevertheless, their arrests, deportations, and deaths in the infamous internment camps all resulted from their silent approval of the decision by Andre and sisters Christiane and Jacqueline to actively oppose the Nazi occupation. Hitler, Eisenhower, Patton, Churchill, Roosevelt, and, of course, de Gaulle appear frequently in the background of this narrative and help supply just enough historical information to orient readers. In the foreground always, though, are the young Boulloches and their close confederates. Smuggling arms, recruiting friends, gathering information, enduring torture, tales of escape, secret knocks, Gestapo interrogations, fortuitous encounters, sabotage missions, clandestine apartments-all are part of their story. Their resolve and bravery and even the "romance" of their exploits are plain to readers but not to the survivors who knew too well the price the family paid. For 50 years they remained, even to their own children, largely silent about all of it. Thanks to a family connection forged in the war's immediate wake, Kaiser has managed to gather all the painful details, and he assembles them masterfully. At once heroic and heartbreaking, this story leaves an indelible mark.

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July 1, 2015

Seeking to reverse the dismissiveness that frequently surrounds the French Resistance during the Nazi Occupation, former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter Kaiser (The Gay Metropolis) delivers readers to street-level Paris, in-step with the three youngest Boulloche siblings, who belonged to an upper-middle-class family known for their intellectual pursuits and moral obligation--and who risked everything to liberate their country. This immersion contextualizes the life-and-death world for readers; it also creates in the immediacy of minute-to-minute choices confronted, their aftermath, and the sacrifices made, a cinematic heartbeat. Son Andre becomes Charles de Gaulle's military delegate in Paris, coordinating the Resistance of the nine northern regions of France only to be betrayed by an associate (surviving three concentration camps on a career path dedicated to the reconciliation of France and Germany). Meanwhile, his sisters Christiane and Jacqueline continue the underground fight, decoding secret telegrams, smuggling guns by bicycle, often in a basket underneath eggs or vegetables, until the end of the war. VERDICT Kaiser's account of a family's devotion and resilience in the face of horrific tyranny tells a highly recommended story of resolve and bravery that can't help but feel romantic in its selfless and profound obligation, but this is not gloss nor ungrounded canonization.--Benjamin Malczewski, Toledo-Lucas Cty. P.L., MI

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