The Postmistress of Paris

Set against World War II in France, the novel follows Nanée Gold, a wealthy 28-year-old American heiress from Evanston, Illinois, and Edouard Moss, a German-Jewish photographer, as their lives intersect amid the Nazi threat and an American-led effort to smuggle endangered refugees to safety.

In January 1938, Nanée lives in Paris, flying her red Vega Gull airplane and attending a Surrealist art exposition as a favor to Danny Bénédite, a Frenchman whose family she lived with as a Sorbonne student. At the gallery, she meets Edouard, whose photojournalism documenting Nazi cruelty forced him to flee Germany. His young daughter, Luki, clutches a beloved mohair kangaroo named Pemmy and mistakes Nanée for her dead mother, Elza, because of their resemblance. At a late-night gathering afterward, Nanée notices that Pemmy's pouch is empty, its baby joey missing. Edouard departs the next day for Sanary-sur-Mer, a Provençal fishing village, where he and Luki settle into a cottage. Luki struggles to understand her mother's death, and they establish a ritual of singing lullabies on a fallen pine trunk they call their "dreaming log."

Nanée's backstory reveals a complicated upbringing. Her father encouraged her independence but died during a routine operation in 1928 while she was in Paris. He left her Marigold Lodge, the family's Michigan summer home, inscribed "To my brave girl." Nanée remained in Europe and never settled into the conventional life her family expected.

When France declares war in September 1939, Danny enlists, entrusting Nanée with his wife, T (Théo Bénédite), and their young son, Peterkin. French police arrest Edouard just after he puts Luki on a train to Paris with his friend Berthe, and he is sent to Camp des Milles, a tile factory converted into an internment camp for foreign-born men, many of them anti-Nazi artists and intellectuals. Alongside painter Max Ernst, Edouard endures brick dust, starvation rations, and straw sleeping mats. He writes nightly letters to Luki he cannot send.

As Germany invades France in June 1940, Nanée flees Paris with T, Peterkin, and her poodle, Dagobert. German planes strafe them on the road. France surrenders, and Nanée fails to get Peterkin out of the country, unable to obtain papers for a child who is not hers. Berthe hides Luki in a trunk when German soldiers search her home in Brittany; the child lies silent as soldiers rattle the lock but ultimately leave. After returning Peterkin to T, Nanée settles in Marseille.

There she joins the rescue operation of Varian Fry, an American journalist sent by the Emergency Rescue Committee to smuggle endangered artists and intellectuals out of France. The organization, the Centre Américain de Secours (CAS), secretly forges documents and arranges border crossings. Fry nicknames Nanée "the Postmistress" after she proves her value as a courier, financier, and currency exchanger.

Danny, reunited with T, joins the CAS as Varian's chief of staff. Nanée rents Villa Air-Bel, a sprawling hilltop estate outside Marseille, as a communal household. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, his wife Jacqueline, and their daughter Aube also take rooms. The villa hosts Surrealist salons on Sundays, forbidden jazz from a shortwave radio, and a secretly kept cow that provides milk for the children.

When Danny learns that the Kundt Commission, a Gestapo unit hunting targeted refugees, is coming for Edouard at Camp des Milles, Nanée devises a plan. She dines with the camp commandant, wearing her best suit and diamonds, and plies him with wine. The commandant assaults her, but she endures it to obtain Edouard's signed release papers. The next morning, she discovers Edouard escaped two days earlier by hiding in a garbage truck. Max Ernst, who has been answering roll call in Edouard's place, gives Nanée the family photograph and urges secrecy.

Edouard has been hiding in a flooded cellar beneath a Panier brothel. Danny brings him to Villa Air-Bel, where Nanée gives him his papers and the photograph. She travels to Sanary-sur-Mer to recover his cameras and negatives and finds Joey, the missing baby kangaroo, in a coat pocket. In the villa's makeshift darkroom, Edouard begins printing negatives again, and he and Nanée grow closer, becoming lovers. An interzonal postcard, one of the few forms of mail permitted between occupied and unoccupied France, reveals that Luki is at a convent school in Amboise, just across the demarcation line dividing German-controlled and Vichy-governed zones.

Nanée secures an American passport for Luki by convincing Vice Consul Harry Bingham that the child is her brother's illegitimate daughter. She crosses into occupied France, finds Luki at the convent, and escapes with her through Château de Chenonceau, whose gallery spans the river forming the demarcation line. German soldiers discover them outside, but one, who has a daughter Luki's age, lets them go. After a tense train journey, Nanée delivers Luki to Edouard at the villa. Luki clings to her father and says she "didn't disappear."

Varian secures Edouard an American visa, but police roundups before Vichy leader Pétain's visit result in the household's adults, except Jacqueline, being arrested and held on the SS Sinaïa, a ship in the harbor. A guard's mix-up accidentally releases Edouard while Danny remains detained. Vice Consul Bingham eventually secures their release. The police also confiscate the cow, and the incident makes escape urgent.

Through Edouard's reflections, the history behind his photograph Salvation emerges: Elza was gang-raped by Nazis as retaliation for Edouard's journalism and asked him to photograph her afterward as a means of healing. Elza was already pregnant when the photograph was taken, and Edouard reveals that Luki may not be biologically his. Elza later returned to Germany to rescue her sister, and both women were killed. Elza's final note asked Edouard to keep Luki with him always.

On December 8, 1940, the three depart Marseille by train. Edouard travels under the alias Henri Roux with forged papers and his negatives hidden in a hollowed-out baguette. At Banyuls-sur-Mer, near the Spanish border, they connect with Hans Fittko, who runs a clandestine escape route over the Pyrenees with his wife, Lisa. Lisa is hospitalized, so Hans draws a rice-paper map and guides them partway before an injury forces him back. Near the summit, Joey falls and plays a musical note, alerting three Gestapo agents on the road above. Nanée pulls her pearl-handled Webley revolver and shoots all three. A bullet grazes her ear. They press on and crest the summit to discover they have crossed into Spain.

On a log overlooking two seas, Nanée tells Edouard she is turning back: Everything good she has done, she has done in France. Luki says the angels still need Nanée. Nanée gives Luki her white silk flying scarf, promising to find her someday and take her flying. Edouard photographs Nanée on the mountaintop with a golden eagle overhead, and they say goodbye.

Edouard and Luki reach Lisbon, where a telegram from Nanée awaits. At Villa Air-Bel, Nanée finds his self-portrait on her dresser with a note: He fell in love with her because she cannot choose him over the many she can save. T tells Nanée that Varian has another delivery. The work continues.

In a brief epilogue, Edouard and Luki sit at Marigold Lodge in Michigan, looking over frozen Lake Macatawa. Luki asks if the angels will give Nanée back. Edouard wraps her flying scarf around Luki's neck. A cardinal lands on a willow branch, chirps, and lifts off over the lake.