Genevieve’s War by Patricia Reilly Giff (review)

On impulse, thirteen-year-old Genevieve decides not to leave Alsace to go back to America in 1939, choosing instead to stay with her stern French grandmother despite the likelihood of German invasion. Soon the Germans do arrive, and Genevieve’s life becomes one of privation for the next five years as the Germans seize their farm animals and food stores; there’s also mistrust as she and her grandmother hide secrets—and an escaped resistance fighter—from the Germans and fear the spying reports of German collaborators. Alsace’s Germanic history makes it an interesting venue for a war story, and Giff keeps the focus tight and specific on Genevieve’s daily life. That specificity, however, makes this rather a blinkered approach, and nobody in the book seems informed about or interested in how the war is going anywhere else. As occupation stories go, this is an implausibly low-impact one, with no in-book fatalities (only one small, unnamed character is sent off to a feared camp never to be heard from again) or even soldierly deaths, and Genevieve’s heroism is pretty minor compared to her tendency to heedlessly share dangerous secrets with anybody she likes. It’s therefore a cushioned approach to the war, but it’s accessible to readers who may not be emotionally ready for harsher truths. No historical note is included.