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Back The World That We Knew Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover
  2. Epigraph
  3. PART ONE
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. PART TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  40. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  41. FURTHER READING
  42. Copyright

When it came time for their goodbyes, Marianne had a sinking feeling. She didn’t want to let him go, and that wasn’t like her. She had never wanted to hold him back, but now here she was, with her arms around him, reluctant to let him leave. He promised he would take on this one last mission and then he would be done. Why was she so worried? The war would be over before they knew it. Had she no faith in him? He reminded her, laughing, that he was the best driver in all of France. He’d be gone only a few weeks. Afterward he would come back to take care of her. Then, he swore, he would never leave again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE MAP

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LE CHAMBON-SUR-LIGNON, JULY 1944

AT SCHOOL LEA KEPT TO herself. The girls were friendly enough; still she was an outsider, the tall fair-haired girl in the gray dress. When she stood outside her gaze followed the birds swooping through the sky as though she was trying to summon one, but she always walked away disappointed, brooding. The message she was waiting for had yet to come.

By now she was sixteen. She didn’t want to grow any older. The farther she was from the age she had been when she left Berlin, the more she feared she would forget her past. Who had taught her how to read, who had sewn her clothes, who had told her stories about the wolves she sometimes heard up in the craggy mountains. People said none were left, that they had been hunted to extinction, but some had survived, up where the altitude was so great and the air so thin not even the birds could fly. Who would know you when you were the last one left of your kind? If she could no longer remember her mother and grandmother, would she forget that she had once been loved?

But time was moving forward, and everything changed. Even in this tiny, isolated village, people had heard about the attack on German forces in Normandy. News was carried by members of the Resistance, and there was a wild conviction that the war had turned. Anything might be possible now, and it seemed that fate might not be set out before them in a straight, unwavering path, but might instead be a curving line marked by chance and choice, infinite in its possible destinations.