RebeccaIsabelle is continuing her harrowing work with smuggling the downed fliers into free zones, but the nets are tightening and they are searching for the Nightingale more and more. Vianne is also learning that she can do something to help the war effort. Seeing the children being deported is breaking her heart, and so she begins to hide as many as she can. By placing them in the orphanage with the Mother Superior, and listing them as orphans, she can save some of them from the fate that surely awaits them as they are carted out of the cities. She is keeping a careful list, but things have gotten even more dangerous for her.
When Captain Beck “disappeared”, a new German officer came to live with Vianne and her daughter. But now, there is a young boy living in their house. Her friend Rachel’s son has been “adopted” by Vianne, and she has to be extremely careful. She has changed his name, but what happens if he states his real name? The officer is not the gentleman that Beck was. Vianne is degraded over and over, and the horrors that she endures to keep her kids safe are many.
Isabelle has been careful, but not careful enough. She and the other are rounded up on the night before they are to leave to cross the Pyrenees, with a new group of airman. They are taken to jail, and Isabelle has to remind herself over and over that she must remain silent for 48 hours. She is afraid of what they might do to her, but she is unwilling to give up and state who she really is. As the time moves on, she begins to despair. But something happens that she did not see coming. Her father comes forward and states that he is the Nightingale. After he is taken out and shot, Isabelle and the others who were helping her are sent to concentration camps. The struggle to remain alive is the one thing that keeps them going each and every day. No matter what the deprivations are, they refuse to lose hope.
Vianne is still waiting for the day that her husband will come home. But when he does, things are quite different, and she knows that nothing will really never be the same…
This week we are reading Chapters 30-39
Questions:
- Vianne takes a calculated risk in helping children hide during the oppression. Why do you think it took her so long in getting involved in helping out during the war?
- Why all the sudden did their father have a change of heart?
- Vianne has hidden a young boy for so long, how do you tell him that everything has changed and she is not who he thinks she is?
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