What I’m Reading: The Girl in the Blue Beret

I have a long list of audio books on hold but none were ready to be checked out so I found myself searching the stacks to find some historical fiction.  I ended up finding The Girl in the Blue Beret: A Novel  by  Bobbie Ann Mason.

I love WWII books so this was definitely in my interest field as it was about a French family that help Allied Forces aviators who had crashed landed.  I enjoyed the book as it was one of my first experiences hearing about that side of the war.  The book is fiction but it was based on a true story.

Here’s what Amazon had to say about it, “Inspired by the wartime experiences of her father-in-law, Bobbie Ann Mason has crafted the haunting and profoundly moving story of an American World War II pilot shot down in Occupied Europe, and his wrenching odyssey of discovery, decades later, as he uncovers the truth about those who helped him escape in 1944.  
 
At twenty-three, Marshall Stone was a confident, cocksure U.S. flyboy stationed in England, with several bombing raids in a B-17 under his belt. But when enemy fighters forced his plane to crash-land in a Belgian field during a mission to Germany, Marshall had to rely solely on the kindness of ordinary Belgian and French citizens to help him hide from and evade the Nazis. Decades later, restless and at the end of his career as an airline pilot, Marshall returns to the crash site and finds himself drawn back in time, unable to stop thinking about the people who risked their lives to save Allied pilots like him. Most of all, he is obsessed by the girl in the blue beret, a courageous young woman who protected and guided him in occupied Paris.
 
Framed in spellbinding, luminous prose, Marshall’s search for her gradually unfolds, becoming a voyage of discovery that reveals truths about himself and the people he knew during the war. Deeply beautiful and impossible to put down,  The Girl in the Blue Beret  is  an unforgettable story—intimate, affecting, exquisite—of memories, second chances, and one intrepid girl who risked it all for a stranger.”

It was a good book and I’m glad to h ave read it.  I personally would have liked to feel closer to the main character though.  It was worth my time and very interesting however I didn’t have that close reader/character bond that makes me feel head over heals in love with a book.  Amazon readers give it a 3.9 ….I’d give it a 4.