In Picardy's Fields

Prequel to The Diamond Courier

De: Hannah Byron

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

A gripping WWI historical fiction romance that lays the foundation for The Resistance Girl Series

France, 1918.
In a world torn apart by war, two courageous women step into history.

Agnès de Saint-Aubin, a Parisian baroness with a surgeon’s hands and a secret worth dying for, risks everything to save lives at a makeshift military hospital deep in German-occupied Picardy. Beside her stands American doctor Alan Bell—steadfast, principled, and increasingly drawn to the woman who defies every expectation.

Meanwhile, Countess Madeleine de Dragoncourt defies her aristocratic upbringing to fight back against the German forces who have seized her ancestral home. Her daring plan to reclaim Château de Dragoncourt puts her on a collision course with British Major Gerald Hamilton—her match in wit, will, and unresolved tension.

But this is only the beginning.
Their legacies will echo into the next war, when their daughters take up the mantle of resistance during WWII. From France to Norway, Holland to Britain, The Resistance Girl Series follows their descendants—female spies, saboteurs, and freedom fighters whose courage reshapes the world.

Meticulously researched and emotionally resonant, In Picardy’s Fields is a standalone introduction to a bestselling historical fiction saga. Perfect for readers of Kristin Hannah, Jennifer Robson, and Kate Quinn.

The characters in the story.

Story was good, but virtual voice lacked a great deal. Virtual voice made it hard to listen to the book.

not much

The reader did a poor job reading, very flat. She didn't know how to set several of the French words. Just poorly done.

WWI - The Mothers of the Resistance

I belong to a women’s book club that’s reading Hannah Byron’s Resistance Girls series this year, but because of work and a commute, I didn’t have time to read the first two books. I was thrilled when the Audible versions were released in time for the March meeting. I promptly listened to Book 3 “The Parisian Spy” (we all liked it, especially the way it made WWII Paris a real place) and then I started at the beginning with “In Picardy’s Fields.”

Picardy is set in WWI France. A very young surgeon Agnès is mentored by an American physician Alan Bell. They run a surgical hospital in a château, converted into wartime use. I like the way the author discusses the medical procedures in use in 1918, and the inevitable loss of life caused by infection (antibiotics were discovered a decade later). Madeline, a member of the aristocratic family who has lived in the château for centuries, is an ambulance diver who helps wrest control of the hospital away from the Germans who occupied it towards the end of the war.

There were several shocking turns in the book, and I liked that it wasn’t predictable. I did get my little heart unexpectedly broken early on.

There was a monkey in the book that I found distracting, but it wasn’t so off putting it made me stop the listen.

The narration - well, it’s an automated voice. It’s a pleasant voice, but there are issues. It’s inconsistent in pronouncing names, and Agnès was one of them. And sometimes, it just says the wrong word - once it was the word whole, but read with an ‘r’ where the ‘l’ is. That misspeak yanked me right out of the story and back to my real life.

I’m off to the next listen, “The Diamond Courier.”

Trite Story, Seems Written for Chikdren, AI Narration Is Flat and Butchers Pronunciation.

The story feels as if it’s written for a middle-school audience. Simple, basic grammar, trite story. Boring and more of a harlequin romance than a well-written, well-structured, adult novel.
The AI-translation is flat, and the accent is close to a Southern US accent rather than an English accent for the main character, and relevant accents for other European characters in the story. Frequently the narration completely butchers the pronunciation. Too painful to listen to.