My Longest Night

A Twelve-Year-Old French Girl's Memories of D-Day

This is the 1st UK edition, hardback, published in 1984 by Leo Cooper, with dustjacket, ISBN 0436138107, 222 pages. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Note - the book was published with the wrong ISBN on the bibliographic details page (0436377055); the correct ISBN is on the back dustjacket flap. The book was originally published in the native French in 1978 by Editions Robert Laffont entitled 'Bye Bye Genevieve'. It was subsequently published in New York in 1981 by Seaver Books. Contents: Such was the sleepy nature of the Normany town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise 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 Genevieve 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 emmissaries 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. Genevieve Dubsocq emerges as a remarkable young woman whose story will touch the hearts and minds of all who read it