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

Pearson, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159921072X ISBN 13: 9781599210728

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2008

Synopsis

Virginia Hall left her Baltimore home in 1931 to enter the Foreign Service. But as Hitler was building toward the peak of his power in Europe, she went to work for the British Special Operations Executive. She was assigned to France, where she became the architect of the Resistance movement in central France, helping escaped prisoners of war, and American Allied paratroopers. 

The Gestapo considered her so dangerous, they put a price on her head, forcing her to escape over the Pyrenees mountains--and on an artificial leg. When she got to England, she was reassigned to France, disguised as an old peasant woman. Her spy circuit captured 500 German soldiers and killed more than 150, while they sabotaged Nazi communication and transportation facilities. Hitler's forces were hot on her trail, yet her daring intelligence activities and indomitable spirit defied the expectations of even the Allies until the very end of the war.

To the Germans, she was "the lady with a limp." To the Allies, she was a savior. This is her true story, and her ONLY biography to include actual information from those brave men who were a part of her spy circuit.

About this title

About the Author

Judith L. Pearson is an award winning writer whose 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 hundreds of thousands of words, including 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 purchased for a movie.

A diagnosis of cancer 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/ Her current book project, From Shadows to Life: A Biography of the Cancer Survivorship Movement, is anticipated to be on bookshelves in early 2021.

Judy is the founder of A 2nd Act, an organization that supports and celebrates women survivors of all cancers as they use their gifts of life and experience to give back to the greater good. She and her husband live in the shadows of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. 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: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 159921072X
• ISBN 13: 9781599210728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288