Code Name Verity

Wein, Elizabeth. Code Name Verity. 2012. 441p. ISBN 9781405258210. Available at FIC WEI on the library shelves.

The year is 1943, and the Second World War is raging across Europe. Queenie and Maddie have known each other for years, sharing a love of flying and of secret missions. With limited roles for women and grounded from flying during the war, both join the women’s auxiliary and are trained in radar operations. Their temerity and dedication soon bring them to the attention of higher ups, and both Queenie and Maddie become more involved in the war effort in their own way.

Queenie joins Special Operations and becomes a skilled interrogator. Maddie returns to life as a civilian pilot, flying broken planes to be fixed and ferrying passengers for Special Operations, no questions asked.

When Queenie’s pilot has a car accident, Maddie steps up and volunteers to fly her over France, where she will land and meet with the French Resistance for her first cross-channel mission. Unfortunately, the plane is hit by anti-aircraft fire and Maddie must crash-land it. Queenie parachutes out of the airplane, but is soon captured by the Germans before making contact with the Resistance.

Told from two perspective, the first half relates how Queenie, code name Verity, must exact as much time as possible from her Germans tormentors, especially the dreaded SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden. Kept alive to write codes the Germans mistakenly believe she has, she also writes her story from her youth to her meeting with Maddie and how their lives became intertwined. For as long as she writes, she will be kept alive.

Shown photographs of Maddie’s plane crash and of the dead and burned body in the cockpit, Queenie despairs that her best friend in the world died when she shouldn’t have even been there. This story, therefore, is a way for her to memorialize Maddie.

The second half of the book tells Maddie’s story from the crash to her contact with the French Resistance. Code named Kittyhawk, Maddie soon gets involved with fighting the Germans while waiting for extraction out of France. Aided by Queenie’s brother and by local resistance fighters, the two of them mount a rescue attempt to save Queenie and bring her back home.

An excellent historical novel, this book vividly portrays the era of spying and fear embodied by the Gestapo and the extreme to which people would go to survive. You can also look at Rose Under Fire for a similar tale of a girl aviator behind enemy lines. The author of this book also cowrote American Wings: Chicago's Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky.