Thanks to @veryhappy for the list of other worthwhile books.
I’m very glad I read this book, and will remember, (while it has many flaws), it dealt with intimate women’s issues, in an era before the 1960’s sexual revolution and women’s rights. Kudos to Quinn for creating very damaged individuals, and a compelling storyline, to a satisfying conclusion.
I hoped Eve would find some happiness as a grandmom figure to Charlie’s baby, but so not her character to be domesticated ( tamed) in any way.
From the epilogue ———-
Louise’s operation lasted four agonizing hours in an unheated and inadequately-disinfected room of the notorious Siegburg infirmary that had recently housed a typhus epidemic. It’s impossible to say if the Siegburg officials intended for that surgery to kill her; the infirmary’s lack of hygiene and proper medical care killed many patients even without extra malice intended. But Louise was certainly a problem prisoner for the Germans, and they had little compassion for her dying days, refusing her final request to be sent to die in her mother’s care, and ultimately sending her from Siegburg to a lonely deathbed in Cologne, away from her loyal friends and fellow prisoners. I dearly wished I could have changed
@jollymama and others who didn’t see the epilogue which truly added so much to the importance of this book
About “violette” based on real person
“ Charlotte Lameron (changed to Violette Lameron, as I already had a Charlotte). Leonie first joined the war effort as a Red Cross nurse, and soon afterward was recruited as Louise de Bettignies’s staunch aide and loyal friend. “I was ready to follow her anywhere,” Leonie later wrote, “for I knew instinctively that she was a girl capable of great things.” Though Leonie was arrested shortly before Louise, the two were tried together, sentenced together, and served their prison time at Siegburg together. Louise died in Siegburg of a pleural abscess, but Leonie survived, a be-medalled veteran spy who married a journalist after the war and managed a china shop in Roubaix.”
From the epilogue
English patriotism is no less powerfully represented in the person of real-life historical figure Captain (later Major) Cecil Aylmer Cameron. The man known to his sources as Uncle Edward recruited not only Louise de Bettignies, but Leon Trulin, another French spy who became a martyr after being arrested and shot by the Germans. Cameron’s unusual past—his arrest on charges of insurance fraud, the prison term he served supposedly trying to protect his wife, his reinstatement to intelligence work during the war, and his post-war suicide—is all true,
About the massacre
“ The only thing certain in the fog of war is that the men of Oradour-sur-Glane were mostly rounded up and shot in barns and surrounding village buildings, while the women and children were herded into the church and killed. The outlying execution sites had some survivors, but only one survived the inferno at the church: Madame Rouffanche. I lifted the story of her escape almost word for word from her testimony at the 1953 trial where the surviving known SS officers who took part in the massacre were tried and condemned for their crimes. It is true that a young mother and her baby attempted to climb through the church window after Madame Rouffanche, and that they were killed by gunfire—it was, however, a local woman named Henriette Joyeux and her infant son,
@jerseysouthmomchess, thanks for the info from the Author’s Notes. The historical details in that section are so interesting (and heartbreaking).
To add to @VeryHappy’s list, here is the “Further Reading” at the end of the book. Since I have an actual book, I’m going old school with photos. (Shout out to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society – our very first CC book.)
An amazing woman – and I’d never heard of her before this book.
The back of the book also has a section called Voices of the Past: Letters and Trial Records.
It includes an excerpt from one of Louise’s letters to her Mother Prioress.
You know, Mother, how much I need help and intercession near God for His mercy. My life was not without faults, and I have not been a model of gentleness and self-sacrifice. Since I am alone, I have had time to examine my life; what miseries I have discovered! I am ashamed of myself and the bad job I’ve made of my time and my health, my faculties and my freedom . . .
The decision of the council of war is not debatable. I accept my sentence with courage. During my operation, I envisioned death calmly and without fear; today I add a feeling of joy and pride because I refused to denounce anyone, and I hope those I saved through my silence will be grateful and thank me by keeping me in their prayers.
Louise de Bettignies was a devout Catholic, convent-educated. In the book, she tells Eve that she considered becoming a nun. Given her upbringing and religious beliefs, I wonder if she would have been able to seduce a René if such an opportunity presented itself, or if that was a line she couldn’t cross.
Didn’t she say she did what she had to on her “knees” for border crossings ? 
I think she wss one strong woman who could do whatever needed
@jerseysouthmomchess and @Mary13 , thanks so much for copying these passages. I see how much I missed by going with the audiobook this time. That’s a real revelation that will inform my future reading choices.
My audiobook has the epilogue in it.
@Caraid, I wonder if yours was on Audible? Mine was from the library via Libby. I got obsessive and checked it out again just in case I’d missed something, but no.
You’re right – found the quote:
So many grim thoughts. Eve pushed them away for a practical question of her own. “Have you ever had to–do this?”
“There’s been a German sentry or two who wanted to see me on my knees before I got a pass through the checkpoint” (p. 181).
Of course, I don’t know where historical fact ends and fiction begins with Lili’s story.
Mine was on Audible.
Here is an actual article from Time Magazine, July 30, 1934 (Marie van Houtte = Violette):
Don’t you love the wording here?:
Actually the bride would be less than half the heroine she is today had it not been for the bridegroom. A second rate writer, he has made it his career to keep Heroine Marie van Houtte before a grateful public with such books as Meditation in the Trenches and The Women’s War.
The article tries hard to give credit to the man for the woman’s prestige 
. I wonder if the term “second rate” had a different meaning in 1934 – more like “lesser known” perhaps. Because otherwise, that’s quite a zing.
Here’s van Houtte / Violette in her signature round glasses: Marie Léonie Vanhoutte - Wikipedia.
In The Alice Network, I thought the “big reveal” was going to be that Violette had divulged info about Lili, rather than Eve. That didn’t turn out to be the case, yet this is interesting from the Wikipedia article:
On 24 September 1915, Vanhoutte was arrested, was sent to the Saint-Gilles Prison in Brussels and was sentenced to 15 years.The Germans used subterfuge to force Vanhoutte to identify Louise de Bettignies from photographs, which eventually resulting in Bettignies’s arrest.
That’s certainly possible. The procedure must have been fairly barbaric in 1915.
Re Charlie, she mentions more than once that her mother is taking her to Switzerland – to “a clinic in Vevey…for a certain discreet appointment.” I wondered about this. Abortion was illegal in Switzerland in 1947. No doubt abortions took place anyway, but I’d be surprised if there were clinics for rich Americans to make discreet appointments.
In reading up on this, I learned that in 1942, abortion was a capital crime in France, punishable by death. In 1943, 39 year old Marie Louise Giraud was executed by guillotine for performing illegal abortions. In that climate, it just doesn’t seem like a woman could easily go to a clinic in neighboring Switzerland just a few years later.
More likely, Charlie would have been sent to a maternity home, where she would have had her baby in complete and utter secrecy and given it up for adoption. These homes catered to well-off white families: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/19/maternity-homes-where-mind-control-was-used-teen-moms-give-up-their-babies/
(Slightly off-topic: We had a family friend who experienced this. She was sent away as a teen to an out-of-state maternity home, where she gave her baby up for adoption. A story was fabricated about her absence and no one ever knew she was pregnant, not even our parents, who were close friends of her parents. We found out from her about 40 years later.)
I wondered about that too. Seemed historically unlikely to have an abortion at the time.
I am definitely in the minority, but I couldn’t like this book, and part of my problem was that Charlie read too modern to be believable.
I thought the Alice Network was a great story, badly told by Quinn. I didn’t like Charlie’s story, so half the book was a struggle for me. I didn’t like Quinn’s writing style; too cliche, too repetitive, and too much romance novel, chick-lit approach. The overuse of phrases like, “the little problem” and “the Lagonda” were grating.
Eve’s story was the strength of the novel, but I wish Rose would have been the second half of the book instead of Charlie. I think a story about two heroine spies from two wars, with Rene and his restaurant their link, would have been more interesting. Charlie was too immature and self-absorbed to carry the book.
I have enjoyed this discussion and its links, though.
Great info, @Mary13!
I was listening to this with my husband on a recent road trip. He only liked the Eve half of the book.
Your link to Washington Post, is so depressing, and never have I Been so thankful for Womens Rights, for birth control, ( now available without prescription ? ) and for reproductive rights, pro choice.
The line about “ problem of unwed mothers was a psychological one, making them unfit to raise children” ———-
And, I ask, what about the boys/ men who were involved in this mating ritual - they, too are unfit to raise children ? Geesh……. I hope we don’t go back to those times…………
“ In the 1930s and 1940s, as more young women became pregnant out of wedlock, social workers began to classify them as “neurotic” instead of as “fallen women” or “morally bankrupt,” according to Fessler’s book. By the 1950s, professionals said that the problem of unwed mothers was a psychological one, making them unfit to raise children.
By the 1950s, the Florence Crittenton Association of America, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and other organizations operated more than 200 maternity homes in 44 states. Altogether, the homes housed about 25,000 young women a year (and turned away thousands more), according to “The Girls Who Went Away.””
