Review by New York Times Review
"Avenue of Spies" refers to the elegant Avenue Foch, which extends from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. After the Germans entered Paris in June 1940, the Gestapo requisitioned real estate on the street to establish a Jewish Affairs Office, a torture center and an office for counterintelligence operations. At the corner of Avenue Foch and Rue de Traktir, Sumner Jackson, a native of Maine and the chief surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, maintained his residence on what quickly became known as "Avenue Boche," a place to skirt. Kershaw details the growing involvement of Jackson and his Swiss-born wife, Toquette, in resistance activities in the shadow of Nazi surveillance. The contrast is often cartoonish: the heroic, humane Americans in the midst of "so many psychopaths and sadists." But once the Jacksons, and their son, Phillip, are arrested and deported to Germany just before the liberation of Paris, Nazi "black bastards" become fully recognizable by their brutality. The most improbable circumstances enabled 58-year-old Toquette to survive, one of 17 out of 550 in her group to do so. Phillip, forced on a death trip, also survived long odds. Sumner did not. Kershaw's melodramatic rendering of the coincidence of Americans and Nazis sharing the same Paris street gains poignancy when he recounts the sheer coincidence of survival up until the moment the war ended.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* At first glance, Dr. Sumner Jackson and his Swiss-born wife, Toquette, seemed unlikely candidates to become heroes of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation. Before the war, Sumner was a moderately prosperous surgeon, and the couple lived on the chic Avenue de Foch with their young son. But the two were made of stern stuff; he had been schooled as a battlefield surgeon during WWI, and she had served valiantly as a surgical nurse throughout the conflict. They both ardently believed in public service and were alarmed and revolted by the rise of fascism. Still, with the outbreak of WWII, Sumner wanted to return to the U.S. with his family. They stayed, largely at the insistence of Toquette, who wouldn't leave her beloved Paris. When the Nazis invaded France, Sumner labored again to treat battlefield casualties. Once the occupation of Paris commenced, the Jacksons slowly moved to outright support of the Resistance, hiding and treating downed fliers and Resistance fighters and serving as a conduit passing information between the Resistance in France and controllers in Britain. Kershaw tells their story in an intense, moving account that also serves to vividly describe the life of ordinary Parisians under the occupation.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
WWII historian Kershaw (The Liberator) revisits the valorous actions of American surgeon Sumner Jackson who, along with his French wife, Toquette, and young son, Phillip, falsified the medical records of Allied pilots and troops at the American Hospital in Paris to aid them in escaping the Nazis. During the four years of German occupation, the Jackson residence-which was located on the same avenue as the Gestapo headquarters-became a valuable conduit for French resistance fighters, who from the fall of 1940 had been pitted against the Nazi Schutzstaffel and their informers. Kershaw, using war documents and interviews with the aging Phillip, brilliantly captures the deadly cat-and-mouse game between Charles de Gaulle's underground and the Nazis and Vichy fascists. As the Gestapo infiltrate the resistance and discover its secrets, the Jacksons suffer the same fate as their friends, enduring the unspeakable torment of those they aided in the closing moments of the war. Kershaw's sobering look at a family's heroism in one of the history's darkest hours vividly shows what war costs in human terms. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
In occupied Paris, murderers are treated as heroes and the innocent scrounge for food. Along one street, Avenue Foch, an American family, the Jacksons, try to maintain a façade of normality as they do all they can to aid the French Resistance. This is an extremely dangerous task made all the more perilous now that the Nazis have set up headquarters on this very same street. -Kershaw (The Liberator) tells the incredible story of how the Jacksons secretly battled the German occupation of France during World War II, playing a desperate game of cat and mouse with the abhorrently sinister and determined Nazis. This biographical treatment of one family's struggle to remain alive and together in Paris during one of the darkest periods in that city's long history will keep listeners engaged. Mark Deakins's excellent narration is filled with tension as listeners follow the Jacksons through their many ordeals in a nightmarish Europe yearning for freedom. VERDICT Recommended for World War II buffs and biography lovers. ["Written with an engaging and expressive style, Kershaw's stirring tale of good and evil in the City of Light will have wide appeal": LJ 6/1/15 review of the Crown hc.]-Denis Frias, Mississauga Lib. Syst., Ont. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The saga of a well-situated American doctor and his Swiss-born wife caught up in Resistance activity in occupied Paris. Kershaw (The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau, 2012, etc.) tells a sympathetic story of an American doctor at Neuilly-sur-Seine's prestigious American Hospital in Paris, a veteran of World War I who married a Parisian and resolved, with her and their adolescent son, to stay in Paris and carry on when the Nazis arrived. Dr. Sumner Jackson was the chief surgeon of the American Hospital, a somewhat forbidding, short-tempered, enormously capable doctor who decided to stay in Paris when the Nazis invaded, mainly because his wife, Toquette, was so ardently opposed to living in America. Many of the other chief doctors at the hospital decamped (or committed suicide), but Jackson stayed on, making sure the hospital stayed fullhe evacuated the French and protected the English and American POW patients by falsifying recordsso that the Germans would not think to close it. Kershaw also depicts the tightening of the SS tentacles on life in Paris thanks to the impassioned work of Paris Gestapo chief Helmut "Bones" Knochen, who lodged on the chic Avenue Foch, where Jackson and his family also lived. The avenue, named for the hero of World War I who had shamed the vanquished Germans at Versaillesan irony not lost on the occupiersbecame the locus of Nazi power in Paris and was thus attractive to the leaders of the Resistance, who enlisted Toquette to use the family's place as a spy drop. Famine, patriotism, collaboration, deportationKershaw portrays the suspense and terror of this time in the plight of one well-intentioned American-French family caught up in the horror. A tenderly engaging saga of solid research and emotional connection. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
