Resistance was published by Little, Brown in 1995. The setting is a small Belgian village during the German occupation in late 1943. Claire Daussois, the wife of the local schoolmaster and a member of the Belgian Resistance, takes in Ted Brice, an American pilot whose B-17 has been shot down over the Ardennes. She hides him in the attic — a space that becomes both prison and refuge — and nurses his injuries while her husband Henri, unaware of her deeper feelings, continues his own resistance activities.
The novel operates on two registers simultaneously: the political and the intimate. The resistance network — code names, dead drops, forged papers, betrayals — provides the plot mechanics, but Shreve is more interested in the resistance that Claire mounts against her own desires. She is drawn to Ted not because he is exotic (though he is, a piece of America dropped into rural Belgium) but because the proximity and danger strip away the social conventions that normally govern behavior. They are two people in a room, one injured, one afraid, and the protocols of polite marriage cease to apply.
Shreve writes the occupied village with careful period detail — the curfews, the requisitions, the casual brutality of the occupiers, the compromises that allow daily life to continue. The moral ambiguity is genuine: collaboration and resistance exist on a spectrum, and the characters know it.
Collecting Resistance
First edition (Little, Brown, Boston, 1995): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20