Kristin Hannah. The Nightingale. St. Martin’s, 2015.

Very few books bring tears to my eyes. The Nightingale did. I mentioned in a 2012 blog that it happened once when I read an O’Neill play. Except for works by Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, or Dickens, it has not happened since.

The title is a word play. The family around which the novel runs is named Rossignol, which is French for nightingale. But Nightingale also becomes the code name for an operative in the French Resistance during World War II.

It takes a while for the story to unfold. While there are a handful of chapters set in 1995, most of the story takes place over the course of the war in France, beginning in 1940 with the fall of Paris and ending in 1945 with the fall of Germany. We learn of the lives of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Rossignol, with some action from their widowed father.

Isabelle is single and living for much of the tale in Paris or hiding in the French countryside as part of the Resistance. Vianne is married with a young daughter Sophie. Her husband Antoine joined the French army and we soon discover that he has been captured and placed in a Prisoner of War Camp.

Soon after the fall of Paris, Vianne’s rural village of Carriveau is taken over the by the Germans. Her house becomes a place where German officers are quartered. The first officer is an army captain who is a gentleman. He is apologetic, even, but acknowledges the vagaries of war that lead to such things. He occasionally helps Vianne’s family with getting food as rationing has made things hard throughout France. This reminds us that many German soldiers were ordinary family men like most soldiers in most wars.

However, when that captain disappears, probably in an act of war, he is replaced by an SS officer. He is a true believing Nazi, a cruel Nietzschean.

Without going into too much detail, the two sisters both help others survive what might otherwise be certain death. Isabelle is truly an activist, but Vianne also does what she can in the context of her village. Even their alcoholic father dries out enough to work in the Resistance.

The Nightingale can be hard for some to read because it tells of a very difficult time. However, without trying to spoil things, there are some acts of real bravery, not only from the “official” Resistance, but from ordinary people doing ordinarily decent things that could—and in some cases do—get them into trouble with the authorities and with the possibility of execution or being sent to a concentration camp. This sense of dread hangs over the whole book and all the French characters.

Without going into too much detail, first there is just the attempt to survive rationing and German rule. Then they come after foreign-born Jews. Vianne’s best friend and neighbor is Jewish, but it turns out she was born in Romania, though she grew up in France and is a French citizen. Her husband is also fighting in the army and presumed captured. Some time later they come after other Jews including Jewish children. What can Vianne do to help?

While most of the action takes place in Paris or Carriveau, the tale has scope. The chapters set in 1995 take place mostly in Oregon in the United States. Apparently one of the sisters has come to live in America. Although there are hints, we do not know for sure which sister it is until near the end. Some chapters take place in other rural areas in France, in the Pyrenees, and in Spain. A couple of chapters take place in German concentration camps.

And it all comes together so that readers may weep at the outcome as I did. I reread the last chapter, it was so moving. The last time I did something like that was ten years ago with The Known World.

Life is hard. Some lives are harder than others, but character counts. The Nightingale reminds those of us who have led relatively easy lives to do what we can with what situations God has given us to ennoble even the obscure or mundane.

P.S. As a side note, I have been waiting for a long time for someone to write the pro-life equivalent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It has not happened yet, and The Nightingale is not that book though the philosophy of the SS officer is not unlike that expressed in Roe vs. Wade. Nevertheless The Nightingale is very much a pro-life book, especially considering the challenges that many people in the story face simply to stay alive.