Two American sisters risk their lives in Nazi-Occupied Paris to save British fliers from arrest. The Gestapo sets a trap and on the bleak Christmas Eve of 1940, death is only a step behind.

I was a child during WWII and the war dominated our lives.

Family members served in the Army or Navy. We followed the faraway course of the fighting in huge black newspaper headlines. Food and gasoline were rationed.

The war remained vivid in my memory and, as an adult, I wrote several WWII suspense novels. To sell Escape from Paris, I cut the book from 93,000 to 55,000 words. That version was published in 1982 and 1983.

This month, to my great delight, Oconee Spirit Press is publishing the original uncut manuscript, which has a newly amended 2011 copyright. It has been 30 years in coming but now ESCAPE FROM PARIS is available as it was written.

I hope readers will share the struggles of brave men and women who defied the Gestapo during the bitter winter of 1940. They knew fear, found love, grieved loss. Their lives and deaths remind us that freedom survives only when the free are brave.

In 1940, England awaited invasion and the Nazis devoured Europe. I believe this book will appeal to book club readers, highly intelligent women, often of a certain age, who will bring their own memories or memories of their parents into play.

Summer Library Book Club Picks from Random House.