From the Publisher
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.” — San Francisco Chronicle
"A sweeping tale of perseverance and courage set against the backdrop of Nazi-era Europe, The Postmistress of Paris is the very best kind of historical fiction: a complex and intriguing story that both highlights a little-known moment in the past and resonates powerfully in the present, reminding us that bigotry can only be vanquished when people are willing to take a stand.” — Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
"I loved The Postmistress of Paris, a novel of so many layers - a suspense story, a love story, and a story about the purpose of art. Meg Waite Clayton is a brilliant and deft writer, and I rooted for her strong, witty and brave heroine on her pulse-pounding mission to save Jewish painters, intellectuals, and a motherless child from Vichy France." — Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of Eternal
"Widely esteemed for her previous World War II novels, Meg Waite Clayton triumphantly returns with The Postmistress of Paris, a story of one woman’s heroic quest to help the forgotten in Occupied France. Clayton’s immaculately researched and beautifully written tale of passage and courage and heart is her best work yet." — Pam Jenoff, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Woman With The Blue Star
“The work of an unsung heroine rises from the pages of The Postmistress of Paris. Meg Waite Clayton draws a vivid contrast between the beauty of art and the brutality of war, the power of humanity and the human cost of cruelty, greed, and prejudice. With a heart-stopping flight across war-torn Europe, this is a story readers of historical fiction and strong female characters will devour.” — Lisa Wingate, # 1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours
"Lyrical, thought-provoking prose . . . . This sterling portrait of a complex woman stands head and shoulders above most contemporary WWII fiction.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.” — Booklist
"Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris." — BookPage
“A true gem . . . and a testament to the power of good.” — Portia Kapraun, Library Journal (starred review)
Portia Kapraun
A true gem . . . and a testament to the power of good.”
Booklist
This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.”
BookPage
"Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris."
Pam Jenoff
"Widely esteemed for her previous World War II novels, Meg Waite Clayton triumphantly returns with The Postmistress of Paris, a story of one woman’s heroic quest to help the forgotten in Occupied France. Clayton’s immaculately researched and beautifully written tale of passage and courage and heart is her best work yet."
Lisa Wingate
The work of an unsung heroine rises from the pages of The Postmistress of Paris. Meg Waite Clayton draws a vivid contrast between the beauty of art and the brutality of war, the power of humanity and the human cost of cruelty, greed, and prejudice. With a heart-stopping flight across war-torn Europe, this is a story readers of historical fiction and strong female characters will devour.
Lisa Scottoline
"I loved The Postmistress of Paris, a novel of so many layers - a suspense story, a love story, and a story about the purpose of art. Meg Waite Clayton is a brilliant and deft writer, and I rooted for her strong, witty and brave heroine on her pulse-pounding mission to save Jewish painters, intellectuals, and a motherless child from Vichy France."
San Francisco Chronicle
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.”
Christina Baker Kline
"A sweeping tale of perseverance and courage set against the backdrop of Nazi-era Europe, The Postmistress of Paris is the very best kind of historical fiction: a complex and intriguing story that both highlights a little-known moment in the past and resonates powerfully in the present, reminding us that bigotry can only be vanquished when people are willing to take a stand.
Booklist
This gripping historical love story from Clayton brings readers into the courageous lives of those struggling just to stay alive and those risking everything to help.”
San Francisco Chronicle
"An evocative love story layered with heroism and intrigue — the film ‘Casablanca’ if Rick had an artsy bent … powerful.”
Bookpage
Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris.
Kirkus Reviews
2021-09-15
Love and peril in Vichy, France.
Mary Jayne Gold, an American heiress who worked to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France, has inspired Clayton’s spirited reimagining of those turbulent years, centered on the intrepid Nanée Gold—she can fly a plane!—and the handsome photojournalist Edouard Moss, a widower with an impossibly adorable young daughter. While Nanée and Edouard are fictional, Clayton embeds them in a world of real people: Marc Chagall, incredulous that his own government would turn against him; Pablo Picasso, who refused to leave Paris; Leonora Carrington, who comes to a gathering at Nanée’s Paris apartment; Lion Feuchtwanger, Hans Bellmer, and Max Ernst, among many others imprisoned at the Camp des Milles internment camp; and André Breton and his wife, Jacqueline, who hold a salon in the Villa Air-Bel, a safe house secured and paid for by Nanée, where fellow surrealists distract themselves in talk, dancing, and games. Although friends urge Nanée to go home, she has no interest in returning to a vacuous life as a socialite; instead, she insists, she “wanted to do something to help, the same as any decent person in this newly terrible world surely must.” Her chance comes in 1940, with the arrival of Varian Fry, sent by the American Emergency Rescue Committee to facilitate the escape of some 200 painters, composers, and writers in danger of Nazi persecution. Fry, realizing the benefit of Naneé’s willingness and wealth, makes her a courier—a postmistress—delivering messages throughout Paris. The plot thickens when Nanée becomes infatuated with Moss, who has been sent to Camp des Milles. Dressed in a couture suit, wearing diamonds and a dab of Chanel No. 5, Naneé devises her own mission to get him out. As their love affair intensifies, so do their desperate efforts to find Moss’ daughter and, somehow, survive the ominous world of war.
Sympathetic characters propel a tense narrative.
