A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell [Americas/AsiaPacific]

March is Women’s History Month in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and in celebration, Angela Kissel of the Austin International Book Group will host a discussion of “A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the Spy Who Helped Win World War II” Protected content Sonia Purnell, a never-before-told tale of one woman’s heroism and how it changed the course of the Second World War.

Virginia Hall was a young American woman determined to serve her country. Rejected by the US Foreign Service because of her gender and her prosthetic leg, she nevertheless talked her way into the British intelligence organization that Prime Minister Churchill dubbed “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” As a result, she became the first American woman deployed to occupied France, arriving long before the United States had even entered the war. By the time the first US troops arrived in Europe in Protected content , the Gestapo had already urgently instructed its agents about Hall: “She is the most dangerous of Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.”

According to Goodreads, this book is truly one of the greatest spy dramas in American History, and yet until the work was published, the story had remained untold. Sonia Purnell’s signature insight and novelistic flair makes “A Woman of No Importance” a breathtaking telling of how one woman’s fierce persistence helped win the war.

Of course you all will be welcome if you haven’t read the book yet (but this one comes really well recommended).