The Golden Doves

“WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST OUR STATE…I stepped to the poster and my whole body went cold to see two women photographed behind, walking their bikes along the street near the Flower and Bird Market, one with blond, shoulder-length hair, the other dark-haired. The blond was clearly carrying a baby at her chest, a wisp of yellow baby hair visible. Just under the headline I read 2,000 FRANCS FOR INFORMATION…We stepped to the wanted poster and I took Arlette’s hand, as we read the last line printed there. Les Colombes Dorees. The Golden Doves.” Josie Andserson has a diplomat father from America but her mother lives in a Jewish block. She is posing as a French Gentile named Porter, but she works as a radio operator, intercepting signals from Nazi headquarters on the Ile de la Cite. Arnette LaRue deprives the Reich of her healthy baby boy born at Lebensborn home in Chantilly; when her guardian aunt is outraged by Arnette’s defiance, she meets an unfortunate demise. “Once our messages started being delivered regularly, our superiors in London became so pleased with our work they’d amended Josie’s code name and came to refer to us both as the Golden Doves in their correspondence…we were the infamous Golden Doves the Gestapo had sought…The Golden Doves carry substantial bounties on their heads.” To commemorate their infamy, Arlette took to her parents’ studio and melted down “an old brass spittoon and sculpted a stylized dove, the size of a small grapefruit. She was a pretty thing, with her pointed beak and upturned tail… ‘It’s the perfect souvenir of our work as Doves. We’re lucky to be living this perfect life…Nothing can stop us now.” Martha Hall Kelly’s The Golden Doves’ happily ever after concludes with a wedding avoided: One Nazi doctor takes her life in a river, her collaborator is taken off in a chopper, “And the Golden Doves head back to Paris.” Pairs well with toast and marmalade!

For fans of women spy heroins, this gripping novel is a historical thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end. For readers who loved Lilac Girls, this novel takes place 7 years after WWII and focuses on a new set of characters that were in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. If you have read Kelly’s first novel, you may notice an overlap of some characters.

We follow two main POVs: Josie, an American Jew living in Paris and Arlette, a French woman with a half-German child. The story flips back and forth from 1945 and 1952 for readers to uncover how Joise and Arlette get involved in the French resistance and what leads to their capture, landed themselves in Ravensbrück, the only exclusive women-only concentration camp. For their present day (1952) we follow Josie’s pursuit as a member of the United States Army Intelligence tracking down ex-Nazi’s for Operation Paperclip and Arlette’s pursuit of finding her son she lost during her time at Ravensbrück. One day, Arlette is contacted by a man who runs a camp for orphans in French Guinea who says they have her long-lost son, Willie. She finds herself taking the leap to travel to French Guinea and discover if her son is truly alive at this camp, but things are not as they seem. Page by page, we see Arlette and Josie’s stories intersecting once again to uncover a deeper secret.

I really enjoyed this spy historical thriller! It’s extremely well researched and I learned so much I didn’t know prior about post WWII. It dove into real events that are not widely written about within historical fiction novels and I really appreciated this unique perspective. Specifically surrounding Operation Paperclip and the United States involvement racing other countries to hire German scientists, engineers, and technicians for government employment. The ending — really hoping there is a sequel to this book, I’d love to see Josie and Arlette’s story continue!

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine Books and Martha Hall Kelly for an ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review.