Guest Blog--"The Pied Piper" by Nevil Shute

Since we were going to be traveling for three days, I looked on the free book cart at the American Library for a paperback to take with me. I found an older edition of a novel by Nevil Shute. The Pied Piper is the story of an elderly Englishman who gets caught in the flight of refuges as Germany invades France in 1940. Mr. Howard has agreed to take two young children back to England with him. As he struggles to reach Paris and la Manche/the English Channel, he acquires more stray children under his protective wing. I do not think that I have read the story before or seen a movie version and yet the images in Shute’s story were very clear. I found Shute’s style of telling the story in retrospect reassuring since as a reader I knew from the outset that Mr. Howard had successfully made it out of war-torn France. Perhaps part of my enjoyment in reading this novel is that we have been living in Paris and have recently visited the D Day beaches. This is not a great novel but one with unexpected heros who captured my heart.