A stellar debut…
Set in 1944, Kensington’s debut historical drama will charm fans with its intimate warmth and intense romance. Stranded behind enemy lines in France, eighteen-year-old Katrinka Badeau escapes German deserters and joins the undercover Jedburgh operation under the command of Major Willoughby Nye, her adolescent crush and a close friend and former employee of her father. Her work throws her together with Sergeant Wolfe Farr, the team’s tough-talking radio operator. Soon the duo begins a passionate love affair. But the couple’s contrasting aspirations for the future clash, coming between their love. And Katrinka has never stopped loving Nye. When both men leave for the Far East for duty, Katrinka sets on an arduous journey around the world to find them. But which love will withstand the test of time? Kensington’s stirring, meticulously researched novel stands not only as a tense, moving romance but also offers a definitive account of otherwise a little-known resistance mission. Her detailed account of the early Jedburgh operations—the ambushing of German convoys, rendering the enemy’s telecommunications ineffective, delaying or completely stopping the enemy divisions, and disrupting the movement of German reinforcements to the base— provide both the novel’s fascinating historical background and true drama. It’s among and between the accounts of the undercover Jedburgh operation, Kensington weaves the story of her three protagonists and their evolving relationship. The story twists delicately around various personal conflicts while artfully addressing the theme of what is the real meaning of love. It emphasizes the arbitrary nature of love, the fact that one can neither define it nor control it. The most interesting is watching how for Katrinka “love” is stripped of any dizzy idealism or guided by any fixed set of values. She is unable to understand how society imposes layers of meaning to the word “love” as the meaning can be subjective depending on a person’s viewpoint. Katrinka’s many romantic escapades make it occasionally corny but also playful, reflective, and passionate. It’s fascinating to watch how love changes her as a person toward the end. Kensington combines multifaceted, unforgettable characters with strong, lyrical prose. The pacing of the novel never slows down despite the crucial details of the covert operations hefty on espionage plotting and blood-and-guts combat scenes. Kensington’s ability to place these rather trivial covert operations in the context of the Allied operation will please fans of military history. This deeply engrossing page-turner is the one not to be missed.
