A Coming Evil

In a highly readable novel, Vande Velde daringly combines a fantasy with her tale of a young girl during the French Resistance in WWII. Lisette Beaucaire was angry when her parents sent her away from Paris that September day in 1940. And although she knew that with the Nazis occupying the city she'd be safer at her aunt Josephine's farm in the Dordogne Valley, Lisette resented her "exile." She'd miss her friends and the excitement of being thirteen and starting a new school. Instead, she'd have nothing to do but amuse her little cousin Cecile. That's what Lisette thought, but she soon found out that she wasn't the only visitor at the farmhouse. And then she encountered Gerrard, a visitor from a long time ago, who proved to be a valiant ally at a crucial moment.