Fallen Beauty by Erika Robuck - 2014 - A Novel - 386 Pages

Fallen Beauty by Erika Robuck - 2014 - A Novel

Earlier this month I read Sisters of Night and Fog by Erika Robuck.  Set largely in Europe during World War Two, it centers on the resitance activities of young English woman in recruited into The Special Operations Executive to fight The Nazis in France and an American woman with a French husband who helps downed fliers escape.  They both end up in Sisters of Night and Fog by Erika Robuck - 2022 - A WW Two Novel - 2022

Based upon the experiences of renowned WWII SOE agents Violette Szabo and Virginia d’Albert, Sisters of the Night and Fog is set mostly in London, France and Germany during World War Two.  Virginia is an American, from Florida, who against her family’s wishes elects to stay in Nazi occupied France.  Events draw her into the resistance, she helps downed fliers get out of France, at great risk to herself and her husband.  She loses her comfortable life as rationing gets worse. The search for food becomes never ending.

Violette is a 19 year old English woman, a crack shot and desperate to fight the Nazis any way she can.  She ends up being recruited into the Special Operations Executive and trained for clandestine attacks on the Germans in France.  The training is very tough but Viollétte ends up being dropped by parachute into Occupied France.

The two women are both captured and sent to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

There are lots of minor characters ranging 

from Nazis, downed Fliers, fellow resistance fighters and  family members of the women.  All are marvelously done.  The descriptions of Europe are very well done.

I was very glad when i was able to acquire her novel Fallen Beauty on sale as a Kindle.  Set in a small town in upstate New York, it centers on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 Rockland Maine to 

October 19, 1950 Austerlitz, NY. 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and a woman who becomes her seamstress and close friend.  The novel begins in 1928.

Laura Kelly is an unwed mother in a time and place where this is a terrible scandal.  Millay, living on a nearby fabulous estate maintains a live of sensual and sexual indulgence, married to a completely devoted man, who seeks new partners to inspire 

the passions she needs to write.  She is on a constant emotional roller coaster.  Laura runs a seamstress shop, mostly just barely getting by, taking care of her beloved daughter Gabriel. In the minds of those in her town, she is a “Fallen Beauty”.

Through an intricate  series of happenstances Lilly is engaged to make the gowns Millay will wear on her nationwide tours.  They become close in a strange way. Gabriel calls Millay “The Witch Lady”. There are dramatic connections of all sorts complicating relationships.

Millay is potrayed very much as a demanding diva, taking as her near divine right to be worshipped. I concede at times she seemed overwrought.  

For Lilly I enjoyed and was emotionally gratified by her close of narrative life.

I enjoyed Fallen Beauties a lot.  The Kindle edition contains a bibliography on Millay, a list of Robuck’s favorite of her poems and an interview.

Robuck has five other works of historical fiction.  I hope to read them all.

Mel Ulm