The Secret Stealers by Jane Healey - Review

In this historical novel set during World War II in the United States, England, and France, a lovely young widow from Boston is determined to show she can contribute meaningfully to war effort, using her language skills and experience living in Paris.

Since Anna’s doctor husband died near Pearl Harbor, she has taught French in Washington, DC and resisted her family’s efforts to get her back to Boston. When her father’s friend, Major General Bill Donovan, recruits her to work at his newly created Office of Strategic Services, it’s the distraction she needs and a way to challenge herself. She makes friends with other talented young women working there (including the future Julia Child) as well as handsome Phillip Stanhope, a British intelligence expert on loan to Donovan to help build a US espionage agency. Anna spent a year studying in Paris after graduating from Radcliffe and made close friends, one of whom is now a key figure in the French Resistance. Anna is soon determined to go undercover to France and shows that she can handle stressful situations when participating in a secret raid on the Vichy French Embassy in DC. She persuades Donovan to send her overseas, where she trains in England before being sent to France as a wireless operator. Once there, she is reunited with her friend Josette who has wangled a job interpreting for the Nazis in Paris and Anna, fluent in French and German, assists her. One of the Nazis seems suspicious of Anna’s cover story – can she help Josette get key information for the Allies before their luck runs out?

Bill Donovan - https://tinyurl.com/3mhkprtp

My Impression: It is refreshing to read about WWII from a different perspective and Healey provides an interesting look at the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency, founded by Bill Donovan. Originally from Buffalo, NY (like Anna’s father), he studied law at Columbia prior to serving with distinction in WWI. After the war, he maintained an interest in foreign affairs and traveled in Europe and Asia gathering intelligence. Although he and Roosevelt were from different political parties, they had a lot in common. Donovan persuaded FDR the United States should have an intelligence agency based on Britain’s and was supported by Churchill, who loaned him experts, such as Eton-educated Phillip Stanhope. However, Anna is only momentarily distracted by Phillip and Josette’s brother Henri, as she is genuinely determined to serve her country overseas.

Anna tells her best friend from the Winsor School (which two of my nieces attended) that she is excited OSS has vetted her for a major assignment: 

“And it’s an opportunity to really contribute to the war effort and to use my brain in a whole different way than teaching. For a while now, I’ve been living in a world where only Connor’s intelligence mattered, his accomplishments, his . . . everything.”

I would have been happy to learn more about the early days of the OSS; I feel as if books about brave young women going undercover to support the French Resistance are fairly common. I enjoyed the descriptions of Anna’s training with other OSS recruits in Hampshire and the London seamstress who prepares her clothing. A significant portion of the book takes place in Paris, however.  Once Anna reaches France and is reunited with Josette and Henri, she begins her role as a wireless operator in Paris and is supposed to gather information from the Nazis to transmit back to London. This process is very dangerous: the Germans have technology that can locate radio transmissions so she can’t broadcast for too long and gathering the information on the Germans’ new weapons means flirting with enemy soldiers. I knew not everyone was going to survive but Healey kept me guessing until the end.

Two things bothered me: I have read quite a few books about men and women infiltrating Occupied France. They are warned not to bring anything that would seem out of place and betray them if they are searched. One of the British trainers even goes through Anna’s suitcases to make sure she is in compliance before her departure. It is inconceivable that Bill Donovan would give her a piece of jewelry - a peacock, which is her code name, on the eve of her departure. If the author wanted him to give Anna one of his deceased daughter’s belongings (although how could he have time to be sentimental in the middle of a war?), a gold cross would have been more convincing and less compromising – also appropriate since he and Anna's family are Catholic (I am not sure even affluent Irish Catholics attended The Winsor School in the 1930s, Anna probably should have attended my alma mater, Sacred Heart, with Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy instead).

Similarly, it would not have been advisable for Anna to use her real name in France, even among friends. She would almost certainly have been told to insist on being called Alexine, the identity created for her, just as she demands to hold on to her radio equipment. Acquaintances captured and tortured would be able to reveal her real name and that she is an American, so the less people know the better. There were also a few too many coincidences but I am fairly tolerant of those when the story is good.

Publication: Lake Union Publishing, trade paperback, 2021
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 20th century, WWII

This is book 10/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

This is book 20 of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024.

And why not Paris in July 2024 as well?

Source: Personal copy. I don’t remember where I bought this but it was already autographed – the author is from Massachusetts so she must have done a bookstore event at that location.