Lawhon has proven herself a master at her craft, and she does readers a great service with Code Name Hélène, which she penned after a friend suggested a few years ago that she write about Nancy Wake. Like many of us, the author had not heard of the Aussie legend before 2015. “In all my years researching and writing historical fiction, I have never come across such a bold, bawdy, brazen woman,” she writes. Crikey! I am so glad Ariel Lawhon wrote this little-known story of one of WWII's greatest military leaders, Australian war heroine Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, who not only led successful missions with the French Resistance, but who also killed a Nazi with her bare hands!

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No, before I read this book, I had no idea who Nancy Wake was, or anything about the woman behind the many aliases she had including The White Mouse, Madame André, and of course, Hélène. In fact, Lawhon begins her book with the line “I have gone by many names.” The fact that I wasn’t familiar with any of these names, despite her being one of the Gestapo’s most wanted spies, and the extraordinary number of awards heaped upon her after the war (literally across the globe), makes me ashamed, both for myself (as a lover of historical fiction, particularly biographical, women’s fiction from this era), and for the oversight of history not shouting her story out from the rooftops. Well, thank heavens for Ariel Lawhon, and for her writing her story so beautifully (or should I say, righting history). I will now take this opportunity to reiterate what Lawhon says as introduction to her author’s note at the end of the book: do NOT read those notes before you read the novel! PLEASE! Based on the thrilling real-life story of a socialite spy and astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII —from the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia.Wake had to fight to get the article published, but when it finally appeared in the New York Evening Journal — her stories often were published in American newspapers — it wasn’t bylined. Failure to credit women journalists wasn’t an oversight but instead a purposeful and unfortunate reality for women of the time, one the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed Wake character in the book characterizes as “bullshit.” The story was too long. The first half was dull and boring. For me the story only caught on in the second half of the book It's no secret that I love books with strong women. Women with gumption. They inspire me. To loosely paraphrase Lawhon "Women like Nancy have always existed. But when men write the history books we don't hear about them." In my opinion- it's time we hear her story because it s so.darn.good! Henri slowly woes Nancy, they marry in 1939 and the Germans invade France. Henri is called up, Nancy drives her own ambulance at the front and she helps the resistance by smuggling documents and people. The Germans give Nancy the title of, 'The White Mouse', with a bounty on her head, Henri makes her leave France and she crosses the snowy Pyrenees Mountains and travels to England.

CODE NAME HÉLÈNE | Kirkus Reviews

This might sound a bit confusing but it works really well as we learn about the woman and what drive her to do the things she does. it did allow me to learn about a woman who I had never heard of. As a teacher for thirty plus years, it often amazes and disappoints me that I never knew of these courageous, fearless, and audacious women of the war, and could not extend that knowledge to my students. There are tense scenes through the book with harrowing escapes, torture, details on how the British helped the French patriots, training to become a British agent – all of it was highly researched by the author. Near the end of her life, she became highly decorated and recognized for her strong contributions to the war.The organization trained her extensively, and Wake’s accomplishments in the pursuit of Nazi defeat were astonishing: She once biked 500 kilometers over the course of 24 hours to deliver a message; she killed a Nazi soldier with her bare hands; she presided over the firing-squad execution of Resistance fighters who kidnapped and raped women. And as Lawhon notes, there were many female spies during World War II, but Wake represented one of a very small number of female military leaders.