About the Author

​​Sarah Rose is the author of D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II, and All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. She was a news columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and her features have appeared in Outside, Bon Appetit, and Men’s Journal. In 2014, she was awarded a Lowell Thomas Prize in Travel Writing.

Read more about Sarah Rose https://sarahrose.com

D-Day Girls Press Release

D-DAY GIRLS focuses on the inspiring, dramatic story of three of the women who were recruited to, as Churchill ordered, “set Europe ablaze”: Odette Sansom, an energetic mother of three eager to escape the safe countryside; Lise de Baissac, a composed leader with an analytic mind; and Andrée Borrel, a scrappy tomboy. Called upon to lead the resistance in occupied France, each of them was sent by parachute or by ship through a sea of U-boats, to infiltrate from within. Among their many firsts, they were the first women deployed in close combat, first women paratroopers infiltrated behind enemy lines, first women in active duty special forces, first female commando raiders, and the first women signals officers in a war zone.

Rose conducted extensive research in Britain, France, and the United States, reviewing diary entries and recently declassified documents, and interviewing SOE veterans to piece together their incredible stories. To gain an even deeper understanding of what the women of SOE went through, she learned French, parachuted from a plane, went to boot camp, practiced shooting, and tried to learn Morse code—every effort only increasing her respect for what they had endured and accomplished. “Thirty-nine women of SOE went to war, and fourteen of them never came home. These women broke barriers, smashed taboos, and altered the course of history,” says Rose. “They were sent undercover, so they never expected glory, and their story was classified for almost seventy years after the war. With the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day approaching this June, it is an honor to tell their story now.”