"Becoming Clementine"

"Becoming Clementine" by Jennifer Niven is the third book in the Velva Jean series but the first one I've read.  I kept seeing this book on the "Best Picks" shelf at my library and also on my daughter's table.  I enjoyed it and am trying to decide whether to read the first 2 books in the series or not although I did request "Velva Jean Learns to Drive" from the library this evening.  In "Becoming Clementine" the author does allude to the earlier books and there was enough information about them that makes me wonder if I need to return to Velva Jean's origins. "Velva Jean Learns to Drive" was chosen as an Indie Reader's Group "Top Ten" pick.  Niven has also written three nonfiction books and "The Ice Master" was named one of the top 10 nonfiction books of the year by "Entertainment Weekly."  It is available at my library but I couldn't find "Ada Blackjack" which was a Book Sense "Top Ten" pick and has been optioned for the movies.  Both of her nonfiction books have been published in numerous other languages.  She also wrote "The Aqua-Net Diaries" which is a memoir about her high school experience and it was optioned by Warner Brother as a TV series.  Learn more about Niven at www.jenniferniven.com or check out her FB site.

Niven has taken real events and created a novel that is based on them and Velva Jean Hart is her heroine.  In "Becoming Clementine" Hart, a WASP, volunteers to copilot delivery of a B-17 flying fortress to Britain.  Unknown to those who sent her on this mission, Hart's intent is to stay in England and find a way to get to France to search for her brother who is missing in action.  She volunteers to copilot a plane carrying special agents to a drop spot over Normandy but doesn't count on the plane being shot down and the adventures that follow.  Only she and five agents survive -- thanks to her skill as a pilot.  However, they are running for their lives.  Eventually, Hart makes it to Paris where she adopts an identity created for her -- that of Clementine Roux,  the widow of a French pilot who stayed on in France after his death.  Under this guise she assists the Resistance and takes on a secret mission herself that lands her in a Nazi prison where she is to help rescue a very important woman operative known as the "Swan."  Along the way she also falls in love but will she and her love survive this war and will she be able to hold up under torture and questioning,  find the "Swan" and escape, and still locate her brother? 

This story was partly inspired by Niven's own father, Jack F. McJunkin Jr. who was an Army Intelligence Officer on Okinawa and in Vietnam.  She also located some women spies in her family tree -- spies in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.  Niven also has an interest in the WASP, OSS, and SOE and wove these into her story so the book is really one of historical fiction.   pazt