Thanks to Karen Alpha, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, and Sharon Kelly Edwards for emotional support and critical reading of the manuscript, Cori Jones for friendship and Paris, Binky Urban for her enthusiastic encouragement, Kate Medina for her generous readings and enduring confidence in the story, and Monique Roman, professor extraordinaire, for the French language. Any mistakes in French are mine. Special thanks to Philippe Chavance for his careful reading and pertinent advice.
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the special bond between Allied aviators and their European helpers. Why did it take so long for many of them to reunite after the war?
2. What does flying mean to Marshall? Discuss Marshall’s failed B-17 mission and the effect it had on his life.
3. Look at and discuss the images of flight throughout the novel. How does the final sentence tie in?
4. What is Marshall’s feeling about the young man he remembers as Robert? Does Marshall romanticize him? Why is finding Robert so important to Marshall?
5. Love and war. There are two main love stories in this novel--the younger couple, Annette and Robert, and the mature couple, Annette and Marshall. How are these relationships different from each other? What does war do to love and romance?
6. Why is Marshall so unprepared for what Annette reveals to him? How does he deal with her story? What possibilities lie ahead for him?
7. The name Annette Vallon is inspired by a historical figure--a woman who was William Wordsworth’s lover during the French Revolution, and the mother of his illegitimate child. What suggestions are being made by the use of the name here? What else can you learn about Annette Vallon from further research?
8. What do you make of the epigraph, by William Wordsworth? Is it appropriate? How does it connect with the use of Annette Vallon’s name?
9. What do mountains mean to Marshall? Trace the importance of mountains at different stages of his life.
10. How does Marshall look back on his war experience? How does his perspective change during the course of the novel?
11. How do the experiences in the book compare with your own experiences of war? Have you ever known anyone captured during wartime?
12. What is meant by second chances?
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
ESCAPE AND EVASION
Air Forces Escape & Evasion Society. Paducah, KY: Turner, 1992.
Bennett, George Floyd. Shot Down! Escape and Evasion. Morgantown, WV: MediaWorks, 1991.
Broussine, Georges. L’evadé de la France Libre: Le réseau Bourgogne. Paris: Editions Tallandier, 2000.
Conscript Heroes. www.conscript-heroes.com.
David, Clayton C. They Helped Me Escape. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1988.
Eisner, Peter. The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II. New York: William Morrow, 2004.
Nichol, John, and Tony Rennell. Home Run: Escape from Nazi Europe. London: Penguin Group, 2007.
Ottis, Sherri Greene. Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.
Rawlings, Barney. Off We Went. Washington, NC: Morgan Printers, 1994.
The U.S. Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society Communicator, a quarterly bulletin.
de Vasselot, Odile. Tombés du ciel. Paris: Editions du Félin, 2005.
THE AIR WAR
Gobrecht, Harry D. Might in Flight: Daily Diary of the Eighth Air Force’s Hell’s Angels 303rd Bombardment Group (H). San Clemente, CA: 303rd Bombardment Group (H) Association, 1993.
Kaplan, Philip, and Rex Alan Smith. One Last Look: A Sentimental Journey to the Eighth Air Force Heavy Bomber Bases of World War II in England. New York: Abbeville Press, 1983.
O’Neill, Brian D. Half a Wing, Three Engines, and a Prayer: B-17s Over Germany. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB Books, 1989.
RESISTANCE AND DEPORTATION
d’Albert Lake, Virginia. An American Heroine in the French Resistance. Ed. Judy Barett Litoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006.
Guillemot, Gisèle, and Samuel Humez. Résistante, Mémoires d’une femme, de la résistante à la déportation. Neuilly-sur-Seine: Editions Michel Lafon, 2009.
Morrison, Jack G. Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939–1945. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2000.
Rameau, Marie. Des femmes en résistance 1939–1945. Paris: Editions Autrement, 2008.
Tillion, Germaine. Ravensbrück: An Eyewitness Account of a Women’s Concentration Camp. New York: Doubleday, 1975.
Weitz, Margaret Collins. Sisters in the Resistance. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOBBIE ANN MASON is the author of In Country, Shiloh and Other Stories, An Atomic Romance, Nancy Culpepper, and a memoir, Clear Springs. She is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, two Southern Book Awards, and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.
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