Etta Shiber and Kate Bon­nefous seemed the most unlike­ly of hero­ines: two old­er women — one Amer­i­can and the oth­er Eng­lish, one wid­owed and the oth­er sep­a­rat­ed — liv­ing a qui­et life togeth­er in Paris. Yet in 1940, under Ger­man occu­pa­tion, the two women cre­at­ed a dar­ing escape line that trans­port­ed dozens of Allied ser­vice­men to safe­ty.

Even­tu­al­ly, the women were arrest­ed by the Gestapo. One of them, Etta Shiber, was returned to the US in a pris­on­er swap. With her friend Kate still in a Nazi prison camp, Etta pub­lished a ghost­writ­ten book about their wartime exploits; it became a best­seller and the basis of a Hol­ly­wood film. Yet, as Matthew Good­man now reveals, the mem­oir was also built on fab­ri­ca­tions and omis­sions — among the most sig­nif­i­cant, the fact that Etta Shiber was Jew­ish.

New York Times best­selling author Matthew Good­man spent years research­ing archival records and per­son­al tes­ti­monies to write this book. More than just a sto­ry of two women’s remark­able courage, Paris Under­cov­er is a vivid, grip­ping account of friend­ship, betray­al, and per­son­al redemption.