For Freedom: the Story of a French Spy

Kliatt, May, 2004 by Jean Palmer

FOR FREEDOM: THE STORY OF A FRENCH SPY. Kimberly 8rubaker Bradley. 2003. Read by Carine Montbertrand. 4 tapes. 5 hrs. Recorded Books. 1-4025-6036-2. $36.00. Vinyl; plot notes. JSA*

From the starred review of the book in KLIATT, May, 2003: "Bradley has written fiction based closely on the life of Suzanne David Hall, who shared her stories with the author. The novel begins in 1940 when Suzanne is 13 and it ends when the Allies liberate her town of Cherbourg, France in June 1944. Suzanne is studying to be an opera singer, and as soon as she finishes school when she is 15 she starts working in the local opera company. She naturally has a lot of appointments around town and in nearby towns, and her doctor recruits her as a spy, carrying messages in the midst of the Nazi occupation. She knows that if she is caught she will be killed... Details of her family life under the occupation, her singing career, the solace she finds in music ... make the story a reality for the reader ... a powerful story."

Talented reader Montbertrand makes this historical tale accessible to younger readers. She brings the brave young woman Suzanne, her family, friends, the risks of being a spy and the horrors of living in Nazi-occupied France to life for all ages. Finally captured, Suzanne is being interrogated by the Nazis in Cherbourg and is amazingly saved at the last minute as the Germans desert her, and Cherbourg, hearing of the Allies' D-Day landings. She is only one of two spies of all the spies in Cherbourg to survive the war. Montbertrend makes this tense, suspenseful ending breathtaking Jean Palmer, KLIATT