FULL MOON TO FRANCE

After years in France working in advertising, the author--now a victim of multiple sclerosis--recalls her remarkable career as a courier and saboteur during WW II. Child of a fragmented cosmopolitan family, Der, then in Paris, refused to be interned when the Germans marched in. With others she escaped to unoccupied France, drove an ambulance, and began her underground career by escorting refugees and downed airmen to Switzerland. There she hoped--particularly after an interview with Alien Dulles--to be accepted for similar duties by the US. When she was turned down, Der escaped to Spain, accepted assignments from the British, and was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis. Her account is a feverish montage of fearful, grim, and then exhilarating incidents: suspenseful train journeys, grueling treks over wild mountain passes, way stations with hostile or kindly natives, a blessed oasis of love, brutalized prisoners, hot soup, an occasional glimpse of beautiful, irrelevant scenery. Though one tends to doubt the accuracy of remembered conversations, the rage and youthful spirits carry conviction in this memoir of a woman who--unaccountably--dared.