I am grateful to family members of the Israeli team in Cherbourg: Yossi Wexler-Halfon, son of Brigadier General Yitzhak Wexler-Halfon; Orni Ben-Dor, daughter of Commander Zeev Bar-Zeev Farkash; Captain Sheli Shahal, daughter of Commander Haim Shahal; Tami Ozri, daughter of Rear Admiral Hadar Kimche; and Esther Tabak, wife of Commander Moishe Tabak. Their stories about living in Cherbourg gave me the nuanced flavor of life there.

My thanks also to seamen Moshe Levi and Avraham Avizemer, whose perspectives added color, and Avi Brillant, son of Commander Edmond Wilhelm Brillant, who added his engineering expertise.

An amazing coincidence happened when a friend, the French journalist Serge Farnel, attended a writers’ conference. At lunch, he sat across from the aging Yves Bonnet, former deputy for La Manche in the National Assembly and a member of France’s Committee for National Defense and the Armed Forces. Farnel’s initiative opened for me a channel to experts on the French side of the saga: in 1969, when the event described in this book took place, Yves Bonnet was in charge of French security in the region. He introduced me to M. Pierre Balmer, CEO of Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN, the shipyard founded by Félix Amiot, where the boats were built), who invited me to visit the highly secure facility, now manufacturing nuclear submarines. The visit gave me the in-person experience of the vast place, down to its smell of machine oil. Standing in front of a life-size sculpture of the controversial Félix Amiot, I knew that he would be a character in my novel.

The librarians at the Library of Cherbourg and Bibliothèque Départementale de la Manche helped me search microfiche, but it was Justin Lecarpentier who generously shared with me his trove of photographs, original documents, and archived film clips. An author of several books about the Cherbourg affair and Félix Amiot’s biographer, he produced and aired, in 2019, the fiftieth-anniversary documentary about the event. Justin continued to patiently answer my questions as they popped up.

And finally, on the French side, I would like to thank the charming René Moirand, former journalist at La Presse de la Manche, who covered the Cherbourg event. Even though he had caught a whiff of the upcoming escape, he did not break the news. Moirand invited me and my husband for a weekend at his country home in the French Alps and regaled me with stories that gave me both his inside view as a townsperson and the international aspect of the event.

My two visits to Cherbourg were memorable because of my hosts Michel Niciejewski and Emmanuel de La Fonchais, owners of the magnificent bed-and-breakfast La Manoire de la Fieffe. I can’t imagine a better writing retreat than their beautiful manor set in botanical gardens.

The second thread of this novel, that of Youth Aliyah, was launched with a primer about France’s Holocaust history by Eliot Nidam-Orvieto at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Israel. I first learned from him about the search to rescue Jewish orphans and the custody battles with the Church that baptized many. My thanks, too, to Ariel Sion, archive director, Bibliothèque du Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris; Boaz Cohen, chair, Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College, Israel; and Katy Hazan and Dominique Rotermund, Œuvre de secours aux enfants Archives and History, Paris, France. All of them helped me understand the post–World War II mood in France and how Jewish children became caught in the competition to replenish the lost populations of Europe. The only former Youth Aliyah agent I could find still alive was Idith Yanai-Charuvi; she gave me an inside understanding of the process of rescuing Jewish orphans in Europe and bringing them to Israel.

The second French location of the novel, the Loire Valley, began with a passing comment by Olivier Vidal, a French architect living in New York, about Château de Valençay and the story of Duchess Silvia de Castellane. On my visit to the château, Fanny Chauffeteau, assistante de conservation, gave me a guided tour to its secret chambers and hidden turrets.

With the COVID-19 pandemic grounding me, I selected the specific villages in the Loire Valley where the rest of the plot unfolded with the help via Zoom of tour guide Manuel de Croutte, concierge Summer Jauneaud, and historians Susan Walter and Simon Brand. Finally, in late 2021, my daughter, Eden Yariv Goldberg, drove me to visit these locations. Thank you all for the introduction to this history-filled region.

For additional information, I thank Keren Haliva and Dalit Hasson for their feedback regarding women in IDF Intelligence in the late 1960s; Dr. Charles Polit for medical information regarding disability; and Lisa McLaughlin, for her lesson about the use of fieldstone in house construction.

This book would not have started had it not been for investigative journalist Meira Gaunt, who initiated a call to Hadar Kimche and turned my abstract idea into a doable writing project. And the novel could not have progressed without the support of my writing group, Two Bridges, administered by Walter Cummins.

But it was the patience of readers with red pens, each contributing significant observations and comments, that vaulted this complex novel to the finish line: Sue O’Neill, Lisa Bernard, Astrid Cook, Andrew Gross, Becky Stowe, Diane Goullard, Linda Davies, and, especially, Emily White, my adviser on each of my novels so far.

My agent Annelise Robey and her colleague Logan Harper from the Jane Rotrosen Agency have cheered me from the sidelines. My wonderful editor at HarperCollins, Tessa Woodward, along with her assistant, Madelyn Blaney, ably coordinated a fantastic team—from Lisa Glover, Tracy Roe, and Joe Jasko, who cleaned up my drafts, to Kerry Rubenstein, who designed the striking cover art, and followed by Amelia Wood and Tess Day in marketing and publicity. Their combined hard work shepherded the manuscript from the chip inside my computer into your hands, the reader. Thank you all! I can’t imagine a better dream team to birth my novel.

And, as always, there is Ron, who once again sacrificed our private time to allow me days, weeks, months, and years of writing this story. Fascinated by the research that unfolded with a string of coincidences that opened new doors, he encouraged me to pursue them and accompanied me on three of my five trips to France.

Glossary

caserne—(French) Military barrack.

cholent—(Yiddish) A savory slow-cooked stew for Shabbat with meat, barley, potatoes, and beans. It was developed over the centuries to conform to Jewish laws that prohibit cooking on the Sabbath.

chutzpah—(Yiddish, Hebrew) Daring; audacity with insolence. Having the “gall” or “nerve” to say or act on one’s self-confidence.

CMN—Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie, the shipyard founded and run by Félix Amiot in Normandy, France.

DP camp—Displaced-persons camp; these were established throughout Europe shortly after World War II to care for the millions of homeless, nation-less refugees.

Eretz Israel—Meaning “the Land of Israel”; it was the traditional Jewish name favored by the residents of the Jewish territory before the formal establishment of the State of Israel.

fedayeen—(Arabic) Arab guerrillas, especially those operating against Jews in Israel and Palestine; Islamic militants.

gonif—(Yiddish) A thief.

Holocaust—The genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

IDF—Israel Defense Forces; it combines all branches of the armed and information forces under one umbrella.

kishkes—(Yiddish) Guts.

kosher, kashrut—(Yiddish, Hebrew) The Jewish observance of strict dietary rules and religious practices of food preparation.

League of Nations—The precursor to the United Nations, established in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles to promote international cooperation and peace.

Maquis—(French) Guerrilla bands of French Résistance fighters during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II; they operated out of forests.

mezuzah—(Yiddish, Hebrew) A case containing a parchment inscribed with religious texts and attached to the doorpost of a Jewish house as a sign of faith.

mitzvah—(Yiddish, Hebrew) A good deed; a meritorious or charitable act.

mohel—(Yiddish, Hebrew) A person who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision.

moshav—(Hebrew) An agricultural cooperative of independent farms. Unlike a kibbutz, where everything—from buying clothes to child-rearing practices—is decided and owned communally, in a moshav, residents own their own homes and farms and manage their core family lives and economics independently but share heavy agricultural machinery, purchase fertilizers in bulk, and market their produce together.

OSE—Œuvre de secours aux enfants, a Jewish charity in France that rescued children and ran orphanages.

punchke—(Yiddish) A Hanukkah delicacy of fist-size fried balls of dough stuffed with jam and sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.

savta—(Hebrew) Grandmother.

shmi—(Hebrew) “My name.”

tsuris—(Yiddish) Troubles, hardships.

Yad Vashem—(Hebrew) Central Holocaust memorial located in Jerusalem.

yenta—(Yiddish) An old busybody, someone who gossips or meddles in other people’s affairs.

yishuv—(Hebrew) The autonomous body of Jewish residents in Mandatory Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. It was run by the de facto government of the Jewish agency.

Youth Aliyah—A Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich and arranged for their resettlement in Palestine in kibbutzim and youth villages that became both homes and schools.

About the Author

TAILIA CARNER is the former publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women’s economic forums. This is her sixth novel.

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