Showing results by narrator "Laura Raynor Sauriat" in All Categories

Soraya was just 15 when she was given the honor of presenting a bouquet of flowers to Colonel Gaddafi, the "Guide", on a visit he was making to her school the following week. This one meeting, a presentation of flowers, a pat on the head from Gaddafi, changed Soraya’s life forever. Soon afterwards, she was summoned to Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi’s palatial compound near Tripoli, where she joined a number of young women who were violently abused, raped and degraded by Gaddafi.

Only a teenager when Delphine was born, Lucile raised two daughters largely alone. She was a former child model from a Bohemian family, younger and more glamorous than the other mothers: always in lipstick, wayward and wonderful. But as Delphine grew up, Lucile's occasional sadness gave way to overwhelming despair and delusion. She became convinced she was telepathic, in control of the Paris metro system; she gave away all her money; she was hospitalized, medicated, and released in a kind of trance.

It is harvest season in St. Hilaire, and for those who take their living from the land, it should be a joyous time. But in the fall of 1943, there is no joy in France. Paris has fallen, the Vichy government is collaborating with the Germans, and the Gestapo roam the countryside, conscripting French men to toil in faraway German factories. For Sister Gabrielle, a novice in the local convent, the occupation tries her faith as nothing has before. But she is about to get an opportunity to stand up to evil in a way that few of her countrymen have dared.