The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy - Softcover

Judith Pearson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159921072X ISBN 13: 9781599210728

Publisher: The Lyons Press, 2009

Synopsis

She was soon deployed to France where the Gestapo imprisoned, beat, and tortured spies. Against such an ominous backdrop, Hall managed to locate drop zones for money and weapons, helped escaped POWs and downed Allied airmen flee to England, and secured safe houses for agents. Soon, wanted posters appeared throughout France offering a reward for her capture. By winter of 1942 Hall had to flee France via the only route possible: a hike on foot through the frozen Pyrenees Mountains into neutral Spain. Upon her return to England, the OSS recruited her and sent her back to France disguised as an old peasant woman. While there, she was responsible for killing 150 German soldiers and capturing 500 others, sabotaging communications and transportation links, and directing resistance activities. This is the true story of Virginia Hall, a remarkable woman ignored by history books for over fifty years.

About this title

About the Author

Judith L. Pearson, award winning writer's career began in a tree: a wonderful old maple in her parents' backyard, with a perfect branch on which to sit and spill out her thoughts. Now hundreds of thousands of words later, this Michigan native is still writing.A graduate of Michigan State University, Pearson has written nearly two decades worth of newspaper and magazine articles, and has published three books. The first two are biographies about ordinary people who exhibited extraordinary courage: Belly of the Beast: a POW's Inspiring True Story of Faith, Courage and Survival, and Wolves at the Door: the True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy. The latter has been optioned for a movie.A life-changing event caused Judy to depart from biographies to write her third book: It's Just Hair: 20 Essential Life Lessons. A 2012 International Book Award finalist, the book is the first in a series of three, all involving lessons designed to help readers infuse their journey through life with courage and humor. Her current book project, A Different Kind of Courage: 10 Lessons in Celebration of Women's Bravery is anticipated to be on bookshelves in May of 2013.The founder of Courage Concepts, an organization that cultivates courage in women, Pearson provides workshops and keynotes for corporations and organizations. She and her husband split their time between her idyllic little home town on the shores of Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago. And she still climbs trees!

From the Back Cover

Virginia Hall left her comfortable Baltimore roots of privilege in 1931 to follow a dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. After watching Hitler roll into Poland, then France, she decided to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret espionage and sabotage organization. She was soon deployed to France where the Gestapo imprisoned, beat, and tortured spies.Against such an ominous backdrop, Hall managed to locate drop zones for money and weapons, helped escaped POWs and downed Allied airmen flee to England, and secured safe houses for agents. Soon, wanted posters appeared throughout France offering a reward for her capture. By winter of 1942 Hall had to flee France via the only route possible: a hike on foot through the frozen Pyrénées Mountains into neutral Spain.Upon her return to England, the OSS recruited her and sent her back to France disguised as an old peasant woman. While there, she was responsible for killing 150 German soldiers and capturing 500 others, sabotaging communications and transportation links, and directing resistance activities. This is the true story of Virginia Hall, a remarkable woman ignored by history books for over fifty years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from pgs. 9-10, 11-12

She would relive the next ten seconds many times in the coming months. As she lifted her right leg to climb over the fence, her left foot skidded slightly in the damp earth. The gun slipped from under her arm, its trigger catching on a fold of her hunting coat. The sound of the shotgun discharging startled flocks of birds from the nearby trees. But no one in the hunting party noticed the feathered flurry. They were fixed in horror on Virginia's shredded left foot, her blood staining the tawny field grass beneath where she lay.

...Because of the gun's proximity to her body, the shotgun pellets destroyed Virginia's foot, causing extensive soft tissue and bone damage. In addition, the wound had been highly contaminated by environmental material--fragments from her boot, the grass upon which she fell, the clothing her friends had used to cover her. By the time the very shaken group arrived at the hospital in Smyrna, more than an hour had passed from the time of the accident, and infection had already begun to set in.

Although the utmost was done to treat Virginia's wound, there was no way to adequately manage the infection. Evidence of gangrene appeared and Dr. Lorrin Shepard, head of the Istanbul American Hospital, was rushed to Smyrna. He determined that a B.K. amputation, the removal of her left leg from below the knee, was the only course of action possible to save Virginia's life.

Even before word of the accident had reached her mother in Baltimore, Virginia Hall was being taken into the hospital's surgiacal ward, where her life would be changed forever.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 159921072X
• ISBN 13: 9781599210728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272