GERTIE

A biography of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, a wealthy socialite–turned–World War II spy.

Legendre was born in 1902 to an “ultra-wealthy family” in Aiken, South Carolina, and enjoyed an enviably privileged youth. However, she always yearned for adventure—a desire that biographer Smith (co-author: Eleanor Roosevelt Goes to Prison, 2019, etc.) stirringly depicts in these pages. In particular, Legendre developed a youthful “obsession with big game hunting,” according to Smith, shortly after graduating high school, and she traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, on a hunting expedition, during which she killed five lions. She later traveled to Ethiopia with the aim of bringing back an African antelope, the mountain nyala, for New York’s American Museum of Natural History—a mission she accomplished. During the halcyon days of the 1920s, she indulged in some “serious partying,” as the author puts it, on the French Riviera, but her life would take a dramatic turn during World War II. She was recruited to work for the American Office of the Coordinator of Information, the organizational precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, which eventually became the Central Intelligence Agency. She worked long hours at a cable desk in Washington, D.C., before being transferred to London, and she “reveled in being in the thick of war activity,” writes Smith. While on leave in Paris, she longed to get closer to the action and irresponsibly took a “joy ride” in enemy territory and was captured by German soldiers in Luxembourg. The dramatic crescendo of Smith’s action-packed portrait is Legendre’s daring escape from her captors across the Swiss border, and it’s a sequence of events worthy of a feature film. It’s clear that the author is enchanted by her subject, but she manages to avoid hagiography; for example, she includes evidence that Legendre didn’t get along well with her children. Still, for all her shortcomings, the book makes clear that she was a redoubtable force. As Smith puts it, Legendre truly “bucked many of the constraints of proper society that strait-jacketed so many of her female peers.”

A lively chronicle of an eventful life told with style and rigor.