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1915: Being an American in war-time Paris is not easy. Being an American spy, even less so…
Paris in the Dark
What you need to know before your trail
The First World War is raging across Europe. Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches, although that hasn’t stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher Marlowe ‘Kit’ Cobb, a Chicago reporter and undercover agent for the US government is in Paris when he meets an enigmatic nurse called Louise. Officially in the city for a story about American ambulance drivers, Cobb is grateful for the opportunity to get to know her but soon his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, extends his mission.
Travel Guide
BookTrail Travel to War time Paris
Imagine being a foreign correspondent and undercover agent for the U.S. Government during one of the most dangerous times in history. A stranger in Paris, an outsider during war-time is not the safest place to be.
Kit is working on a story about the ambulance drivers for Le Chapelle, the American war hospital in France. The city is under siege not just because of the war but because of the spate of bombings around the city, thought to be the workd of German refugees
Kit rides around the city in horse drawn Fiacres along the cobbled streets he describes so well:
Cité de Trévise was a cobbled street not even ten yards wide, canyoned between neo-Renaissance row hoses, Number seven was just beyond the street’s central, circular place, where a fountain splashes softly above the heads of three gossamer gowned stone nymphs holding hands.”
And the war is never ending:
“In the dark above Paris, in the deep autumn of 1915, there wer ealways the Nieports flying their patterns, like sentries walking a perimeter.”
He sits at the Cafe Rotonde:
“…That hammering of engine pistons up above might as well have been French worker bees going after chestnut blossoms.”
Streetview Maps
A) Paris - La Rotonde Restaurant
B) Paris - Rue de Seine
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
They say great things come in small packages and this is how I feel about Paris in the Dark. Such a small, dinky book but one packed with so much history, emotion and drama.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Paris in the Dark
Destination : Paris Author/Guide: Robert Olen Butler Departure Time: 1915
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