A heart-warming novel inspired by real life events, about the brave women during WWI who worked in the historic grounds of London’s Kew Gardens.

Posy Lovell is a pseudonym for British author and journalist Kerry Barrett. Born in Edinburgh, she moved to London as a child with her family. She has a passion for uncovering the role of women in the past. She lives in London with her family and is the author of The Kew Gardens Girls.
 

Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.” Alfred Austin

The Kew Gardens Girls combines the “glory of gardening” with the glory of love, friendship and forgiveness. Posy Lovell’s three main characters who answer the ad for gardeners at London’s Kew Gardens in June,1915, are each hiding from loss and heartache. Louisa, at 35, escaping an abusive husband in Kent, flees to London in order to establish anonymity. Ivy, sixteen, compensating for her shameful conduct as a rebellious teenager, wants to be near Jim, assistant to the supervisor at Kew.  First to be hired by supervisor Mac is sweet natured, gentle Bernie who is suffering personal humiliation from a past relationship and his pacifist beliefs. He knows nothing about gardening, but he IS a man. Mac must overcome reservations about women working at Kew Gardens, along with personal disappointment.

Readers will learn about World War I, the Conscription Act, Suffragettes, and the effects these each had on the early workings of London’s Kew Gardens. Posy Lovell’s characters are developed through reflection and slowly learn to share thoughts and feelings with each other, finally revealing personal truths and growing bonds of friendship. Examples of forgiveness, mentoring, trust, handling of grief through generosity and genuine care for others are character traits lovingly cultivated in The Kew Garden Girls. A bonus for poets and gardeners is the language of flowers Ivy weaves through the tasks of weeding and planting the ‘miles” of herbaceous flower beds.  A bouquet of daisies, roses, and fern fronds from the Grateful Reader. (Language of flowers code in link below.)

What does each flower symbolize? Which flowers represent love, hope, healing, loss, and good luck? See the Almanac’s complete list of Flower Meanings and Plant Symbolism. Whether you are picking out a flower bouquet for a wedding, choosing a single flower for a loved one, or planting a garden, discover the secret language of flowers! This site has a fabulous chart! https://www.almanac.com/flower-meanings-language-flowers

Forthcoming novel: 
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN
February 9, 2021

“An alpha female heroine, along with an engaging plot loaded with realism, makes for a captivating historical thriller. Even better, it’s all drawn from the life of a real American hero.” 
~Steve Berry, NY Times and #1 International Bestselling Author

http://www.erikarobuck.com/

The Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab

The Invisible Woman is based on the unforgettable, true story of famous World War ll spy Virginia Hall; also known as The Limping Lady, Diane, and Artemis. Virginia was an American, educated in Europe and had always dreamed of becoming a diplomat. After several rejections due to her disability, Virginia was noticed by Vera Atkins, a high-ranking intelligence officer with the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE. The SOE formed in 1940, aided Resistance groups, participated in espionage and sabotaged freight lines; anything to slow down the advance of the Nazis. The SOE joined forces with the American Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, established later in 1942. Their mission, reportedly issued by Winston Churchill, was to “set Europe ablaze.”

Erika Robuck’s prologue reveals Virginia’s American debutante upbringing and background, before fast forwarding, plunging readers into her return mission to France late in March 1944. Virginia, in her grey wig and old lady disguise and a price on her head, is only projected to survive for six weeks on this return mission. Each account of a “drop” or wireless transmission is filled with nervousness and anticipation of success or doom, exhilaration or death.  The many villagers that participate in the Resistance, offering protection by way of a barn or shed in the woods, become a part of the family; another member to worry and pray and fret over! Readers are guaranteed a ticket and papers to “travel” the secret underground and listen for key messages in radio broadcasts, as Virginia and her teams navigate France in the attempt to defeat the Nazis.  

Erika Robuck’s The Invisible Woman shines a well-earned glaring light on Virginia Hall and the brave, resourceful men and women involved in the Resistance. The Author’s Note is equally enthralling and compelling as the timelines and fates of characters are revealed.

Five “Very Visible, Very Important Stars!”

Readers will benefit from viewing the 2019 movie, A Call to Spy, which covers Virginia’s story up to the opening pages of The Invisible Woman. The character portrayals and scenery will bring the novel to life. A link to the trailer is added below. The nonfiction bestseller, A Woman of No Importance, by Sonia Purnell is also highly recommended.

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine.

In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.”

The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and–despite her prosthetic leg–helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.

Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.

Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall–an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman’s fierce persistence helped win the war.

Janet Skeslien Charles is the award-winning author of Moonlight in Odessa and The Paris Library. Her shorter work has appeared in revues such as Slice and Montana Noir. She learned about the history of the American Library in Paris while working there as the programs manager. She divides her time between Montana and Paris.

The Grateful Reader Review by Dorothy Schwab

Paris, books and a library – C’est très magnifique! Readers will fall into the lives of the mysterious, foreigner Odile Gustafson and her inquisitive next-door neighbor, twelve-year old Lily.

Author Janet Skeslien Charles weaves Odile’s experiences at the American Library in Paris during World War ll, with Lily’s uncommon and insatiable desire to know about all things French. Lily has requested her class book report on Ivanhoe be changed to a report on France-so she has an excuse to interview Odile and find out how in the world she landed in Froid, Montana from Paris! When her insistent knock goes unanswered, Lily boldly steps right into Odile’s living room, snooping around the record collection and the extensive library. Odile oddly appears from the bedroom and surprisingly agrees to the interview! Thus, Odile enters Lily’s life, and they are both changed forever.  

Odile had been obsessed with books and libraries since her Aunt Caro introduced her to the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog at the age of nine: “Inside you’ll find the secrets of the universe.” She begins the interview by telling Lily the completely absorbing tale of her time at the American Library in Paris and how the brave, dedicated staff determined, against ALL odds, that the library would remain open during the German occupation of France. Readers will come to respect the directress, Miss Reeder; adore Boris, the Russian head librarian famous for his bibliotherapy; and wonder about trustee and real-life writer, Countess Clara de Chambrun. The author’s strong character development of endearing staff involved with the daily operations, many subscribers, “habituès”, and volunteers such as Margaret, add several more chilling chapters to Odile’s accounting of her years in war torn Paris. The relationship between Odile’s parents, her twin, Remy, and their involvement in war activities adds complexity to her unlikely arrival in the United States.  How DID Odile get to Froid, Montana? That is a “story within a story!”

When asked by a reporter, “Why were books being sent to soldiers to improve morale? Why not wine? Odile answered, “because no other thing possesses that mystical faculty to make people see with other people’s eyes. The Library is a bridge of books between cultures.”

When asked by Lily, “The best thing about Paris? Odile answered, “It’s a city of readers.” Join Odile and Lily in this “view of Paris” through the heart and lens of a librarian in The Paris Library.

The following is an excerpt from the history of the library. The highlighted names are characters in the novel:

“With the coming of World War II, the occupation of France by the Nazi regime, and the deepening threats to French Jews, Library director Dorothy Reeder and her staff and volunteers provided heroic service by operating an underground, and potentially dangerous, book-lending service to Jewish members barred from libraries. One staff member, Boris Netchaeff, was shot by the Gestapo when he failed to raise his hands quickly enough during a surprise inspection.

When Reeder was sent home for her safety at the end of 1941, Countess de Chambrun rose to the occasion to lead the Library. In a classic Occupation paradox, the happenstance of her son’s marriage to the daughter of the Vichy prime minister, Pierre Laval, and her family’s other social and business connections ensured the Library a friend in high places. That, along with the pre-war esteem of German “Library Protector” Dr. Hermann Fuchs for Dorothy Reeder and the Library, granted the institution a near-exclusive right to keep its doors open and its collections largely uncensored throughout the war. A French diplomat later said the Library had been to occupied Paris “an open window on the free world.”