My Longest Night

“In a childlike style that reflects the excitement of those dramatic, danger-filled days,” a young French girl portrays her heroism during World War II (Publishers Weekly). Such was the sleepy nature of the Normandy town of Sainte-Mère-Église and such was the hostile nature of the “vast area of marshes and lowlands” surrounding it, that it seemed immune from the terror and chaos of war. Indeed, it seemed hard to imagine the local people ever hearing more than the distant rumblings of war or suffering more than those minor discomforts and humiliations which plague a rural community largely left alone by an Army of Occupation. The evening of June 5th, 1944 seemed like any other, yet for Geneviève Duboscq, not yet twelve, and her five-year-old brother, that evening would become their longest night—one they would never forget. An American paratrooper appeared on the Duboscq’s doorstep quickly followed by other battered emissaries of freedom. The Duboscq’s house became an emergency shelter; their knowledge of the region the difference between life and death, success and failure to those liberators from the sky. My Longest Night, with exemplary simplicity and poignancy, depicts D-Day and what followed in a way that it has never been presented before. Geneviève Dubsocq emerges as a remarkable young woman whose story will touch the hearts and minds of all who read it.“One of the most personal descriptions of D-Day that we are likely to have.” —Christian Science Monitor