Winter Whispers on the Riviera

Prologue

Evelyn Shoemaker, twenty-four years old and a journalist desperate to make her name in the profession, was thrilled when her editor, Max, tells her he wants her to go to the C?te d’Azur on the French Riviera.

‘The war is over down there thanks to Operation Dragoon and the Allies,’ he’d said a smile on his face.

She would be the official war correspondent for the paper as that was the only way she could travel freely.

But Max told her what he really wanted from her was stories of the locals, how they had survived being occupied by first the Italians and then the Germans.

How they were coping with peace. He also wanted news about the American soldiers and sailors that were still over there.

When the travel papers came through, she discovered that Max (who apparently had friends in high places) had somehow wangled her more freedom than usual.

Because the area was now liberated, she would be freer of the constraints of war correspondents who were routinely assigned movement orders, had to have their work censored before submitting it and invariably had escorts wherever they looked to report from.

Once she was in the South of France, she would simply have to find a La Poste office and wire her reports directly to the paper.