Bestselling author Jennet Conant brings us a stunning account of
Julia and Paul Child's experiences as members of the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS) in the Far East during World War II and
the tumultuous years when they were caught up in the McCarthy Red
spy hunt in the 1950s and behaved with bravery and honor. It is the
fascinating portrait of a group of idealistic men and women who
were recruited by the citizen spy service, slapped into uniform,
and dispatched to wage political warfare in remote outposts in
Ceylon, India, and China.
The eager, inexperienced 6 foot 2 inch Julia springs to life in
these pages, a gangly golf-playing California girl who had never
been farther abroad than Tijuana. Single and thirty years old when
she joined the staff of Colonel William Donovan, Julia volunteered
to be part of the OSS's ambitious mission to develop a secret
intelligence network across Southeast Asia. Her first post took her
to the mountaintop idyll of Kandy, the headquarters of Admiral Lord
Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander of combined operations.
Julia reveled in the glamour and intrigue of her overseas
assignment and lifealtering romance with the much older and more
sophisticated Paul Child, who took her on trips into the jungle,
introduced her to the joys of curry, and insisted on educating both
her mind and palate. A painter drafted to build war rooms, Paul was
a colorful, complex personality. Conant uses extracts from his
letters in which his sharp eye and droll wit capture the day-to-day
confusion, excitement, and improbability of being part of a cloak-
and-dagger operation.
When Julia and Paul were transferred to Kunming, a rugged outpost
at the foot of the Burma Road, they witnessed the chaotic end of
the war in China and the beginnings of the Communist revolution
that would shake the world. "A Covert Affair "chronicles their
friendship with a brilliant and eccentric array of OSS agents,
including Jane Foster, a wealthy, free-spirited artist, and
Elizabeth MacDonald, an adventurous young reporter. In Paris after
the war, Julia and Paul remained close to their intelligence
colleagues as they struggled to start new lives, only to find
themselves drawn into a far more terrifying spy drama. Relying on
recently unclassified OSS and FBI documents, as well as previously
unpublished letters and diaries, Conant vividly depicts a dangerous
time in American history, when those who served their country
suddenly found themselves called to account for their unpopular
opinions and personal relationships.
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