A Woman of No Importance

What I loved about this book is that it is the true story of an American woman living in Nazi-occupied France, where she organised and ran resistance groups and led them in action.

The book, though factual, reads like a fictional novel, and her exploits and shear "daring do" almost beggar belief. She only had one leg, a fact that many who met her were completely unaware of, yet she crossed the Pyrenees on foot in winter!

It didn’t surprise me to find out that the men who "ran" the operations from London and Washington denigrated her achievements and… show more.

Sonia Purnell vividly captures a pivotal place and time in world history.

She tells the story of Virginia Hall, a woman who became one of the most wanted Allied spies working behind enemy lines during World War II. Even with her prosthetic leg Hall was able to go undercover in Nazi-occupied France. (Before becoming a spy she accidentally shot herself in the foot and her left leg had to be amputated below the knee.)

During the war she had a network of more than a thousand people and helped the Allies reclaim France. President Truman wanted to honor her with… show more.

This is a biography of a woman called Virginia Hall, an American who joined the diplomatic service in the 1930s.

When World War II broke out, she traveled to France and worked in intelligence. She was soon recruiting undercover agents to infiltrate the Nazis. Danger didn’t deter her. She organized a Resistance cell in the forests of the Massif Central. Astonishingly she had an artificial leg from a childhood hunting accident, but she ignored this. 

This is the first I heard about this remarkable, courageous woman. When she returned to the US after the war, she joined what would become… show more.

This is the story of an American diplomat, Virginia Hall, who served in the French resistance.

Virginia Hall, the protagonist in A Woman of No Importance, worked for American and British intelligence. Much of her story was classified until recently.

But once she had access to those documents, author Sonia Purcell was able to weave together a masterly account of this most unusual woman’s brave contributions to the war effort.

Talk about overcoming all odds...A Woman of No Importance is exactly that.

Virgina Hall, an athletic young woman, who has lost the lower part of her leg due to a hunting accident, seeks entry to the foreign service and is rejected. But she’s not about to go home and make cookies.

This is a woman who doesn’t suffer fools, and will put her life on the line for a cause she believes in. An inspirational book that will challenge readers to reach for their higher selves.  

I was deeply inspired by this biography of Virginia Hall, an American undercover agent of the British Special Operations Executive. Posing as a journalist in Vichy France, she supplied the Resistance, trained guerrillas, and freed prisoners from Nazi captivity, becoming the Gestapo's most wanted ‘criminal’. When the danger of capture became too great, she escaped on foot across the frozen Pyrenees into Spain, but later returned as an agent for the American Office of Strategic Services. And all this with a wooden leg!

Virginia Hall was an American spy in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. The genre is non-fiction, but the book flows like historical fiction. Hall is caught up in a male chauvinist world of spies. She is physically handicapped with a limp, but ingeniously turns the defect into an effective disguise. When her supposedly superior male spy handlers fail to provide effective guidance, Hall employs street smarts and courage to create her own spy network. They, of course, take credit for her success and only hamper her operations. This work hits nearly all of my favorite attributes of a story—a woman with… show more.

When I read this book, I couldn’t believe that I and most other people knew nothing about the one-legged American the Nazis called the most dangerous of all Allied spies. This biography is as exhilarating as any good thriller. Throughout Virginia Hall’s sensational career, she dealt not only with the enemy but with needless obstacles posed by men who were her colleagues. With only brief training in spy craft and short-lived college education, the 35-year-old Hall masterminded prison breaks for Allied agents, organized French resistance to that country’s German occupiers, and re-established a broken chain of radio operatives throughout the… show more.

The Germans called Virginia Hall “the Limping Lady,” as she required the use of a prosthetic leg (“Cuthbert”). They also considered her the most dangerous of all Allied spies – male or female. The second female SOE agent sent into France, Virginia set up an effective network that (amongst other things) was instrumental in helping British airmen, shot down over Europe, escape and return to England.  

But what I found the most astonishing when I read Virginia’s biography, was how she didn’t let anything stop her. Not her disability. Not the Nazis. Not the Pyrenees Mountains, which she hiked over… show more.

How is it that I never heard of Virginia Hall! Do heroines like her even exist anymore? That’s what kept going through my mind as I read this creative nonfiction novel about a courageous American spy who operated in France during the Nazi occupation. What a woman! With barely any training and almost no command of French, she succeeded in building a resistance network despite her debilitating physical disability – not to mention having to prove her worth to men unused to taking orders from a woman!