The Woman with No Name

In this fast-paced, often heart-pounding historical novel, Blake (The Surgeon’s Daughter) introduces readers to Yvonne Rudellat, a woman of uncommon courage and resourcefulness. After surviving the bombing of her London home, Yvonne is recruited to train as a special operations executive working with the French Resistance as one of its first women sabotage agents. Slight in stature, fluent in French, and “a woman of a certain age,” she takes on a new identity as Jacqueline Viallat. With a fierce desire to help, she joins the fight and becomes an expert in setting up explosives, carrying messages, and thwarting the Nazis with a group of brave people. What makes this novel all the more powerful is the fact that Yvonne is based on a real person (as are most of the other characters), one of the “hidden figures” of World War II.