I have decided to post reviews for the books I’ve read here on my blog. Previously, I’ve done them as posts on Facebook, but in keeping with my ongoing love/hate relationship with social media, I feel more comfortable releasing them here on my own forum and on my own terms.

To kick off this new era of Sunday Book Reviews, I want to tell you all about my favorite book that I read in 2020. It is a historical nonfiction account of the heroic exploits of a woman named Virginia Hall. The book itself is called “A Woman of No Importance” by Sonia Purnell. I fully recommend this book to everyone.

Seriously, please read this book.

You do not know who she is, but you should. Virgina Hall’s lack of fame is a testament to her diabolical ability to hide her identity and her numerous triumphs. She was a spy in France during World War II who spent years building up an underground resistance against Nazi forces.

Seriously, I loved everything about her story. It is so compelling that it would make a truly epic film or a gripping limited series. Virginia Hall was the real deal. She had a hand in saving thousands of allied soldiers and Jews during World War II and in undermining the Nazi stronghold over France.

Virginia Hall moved mountains at a time when women in counterintelligence fields were relegated to doing secretarial work. An unstoppable force of will and a shrewd, intuitive sense of knowing who to trust took her a long way toward becoming one of the most formidable and effective leaders among the allied forces on the ground who fought tirelessly against the Nazis.

To top it all off, she did all of this despite having a prosthetic leg that she hid from the world.

Yup, just let that last sentence soak into your brain for a minute.

I would put Virginia Hall right up there with the Supermans, Spider Mans, and James Bonds of the world, except that she actually lived to fight against true forces of evil.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

Read this book as a way to honor the unsung work of Virginia Hall.

She is a woman of immense importance.

—Roqué