Excerpt from News of Our Loved Ones by Abigail DeWitt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The War

Liberation

Sirens. Was that what she’d heard? Yvonne dreamed about air raids when there weren’t any, slept soundly through the actual warnings. At first, every siren sent the whole family racing to the cellar; they crouched together in the dark, making themselves as small as possible, their faces hidden in their knees. But after a while, they gave up going downstairs. Yvonne and her sisters, Françoise and Geneviève, climbed into Maman’s bed, burrowing into the warmth of her covers; their stepfather, Oncle Henri, paced the room. Then even that was too much trouble. There was only so much fear a body could hold. If Yvonne heard anything during the night now, she pulled the pillow over her head.

The hunger was worse, the craving for beef, pork, butter most of all. She wanted butter and marmalade on toast, buttery croissants still warm from the patisserie, a butter and ham sandwich, Maman’s kouign amann.

It did seem to her that there had been sirens during the night, but who could say? She didn’t always hear things the way other people did. The confusion never lasted long, but there were moments when the buzzing of a mosquito sounded louder to her than a German parade; when the breathing of her classmates hurt her ears, though the teacher was inaudible.

But the question of nighttime air raids was something else: no one was sure about those anymore.

She rolled over in bed, staring at the faint ribbon of light that slipped through a crack in the shutters. She was so happy to be home, in her room with the red wallpaper and the curtains with their pattern of violets. It was the smallest room in the house, barely enough space for the bed, a child-sized armoire, and a three-legged stool. A single bookshelf hung on the wall above the armoire. Françoise’s room was bigger, though she was the baby, and there were three empty rooms—her older sister, Geneviève, had moved to Paris in September, her two older brothers had left home long ago—but Françoise’s room had to be reached through Maman’s, and the older children’s rooms, though light and airy, were at the back of the house. Yvonne preferred this one, with its balcony overlooking the street.

She and Françoise had been sent home from school at the end of May along with the other boarders; the Allies were expected any day now and it would be better for all the girls to be with their families. Boarders wouldn’t have to take exams, they wouldn’t have to obey the nuns again until September. Not all of the nuns were cruel—two or three, beloved of the younger girls, were even pretty—but the ones who weren’t mean were mostly stupid. Vicious or insipid, they drained the pleasure out of every bright moment.

When the Germans had come, her grandmother had pointed out at dinner that some of them weren’t so bad, some had perfectly decent manners, and Oncle Henri had left the table in disgust; Yvonne, allying herself with her stepfather for the first and only time in her life, had thought, It’s the same with the nuns. It’s stupid to make distinctions between them.

She hated the nuns frankly and openly, which was possible only because Oncle Henri supplied the convent with coal, and though her boldness filled the other girls with awe, she had no illusions: if it weren’t for the coal, she’d be as obedient as the next girl.

When she was twelve, in answer to a question from the Mother Superior about what she was thinking, Yvonne had looked up at her without flinching. "I would like to crush you," she said, and she made a motion with her hands as if she were grinding something with a mortar and pestle. Nothing happened. The Mother Superior did not speak or move. She hardly even seemed to breathe. Yvonne would have thought she had imagined the whole thing if not for her racing heart.

Excerpted from News of Our Loved Ones by Abigail DeWitt. Copyright © 2018 by Abigail DeWitt. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.