Rescue

Rescue is a middle grade novel by American author Jennifer A. Nielsen, who is best known for her works of historical fiction in addition to her popular fantasy series. Published in 2021, Rescue depicts the journey of a 12-year-old girl named Meg Kenyon through Nazi-occupied France during World War II. When she learns that her father, who works as a British spy for the resistance, has been captured by the Germans, she embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue him alongside other fugitives. Throughout the story, Meg finds clues about her father’s whereabouts in his coded letter and uses her knowledge of spying techniques to overcome the challenges she encounters on the way. The novel explores the themes of Appearance Versus Reality, The Moral Challenges of Resistance Efforts, and The Intersection of Historical Events and Individual Lives.

This guide references the 2021 Kindle edition.

Content Warning: This guide contains depictions of wartime scenarios and related dangers; themes involving espionage and conflict; and references to Nazi ideology, including mentions of antisemitism, anti-gay bias, and ethnophobia.

Plot Summary

Meg Kenyon, the protagonist and narrator of Rescue, lives with her mother Sylvie and her grandmother in La Perche, a fairly secluded area of Nazi-occupied France. They survive by selling produce from their farm on the black market while Meg’s father, Harper, is away at war. Meg shares a love of codes with her father and wants to become a cryptologist for the resistance when she is old enough. In the meantime, she practices by passing secret messages to the resistance.

One day, Meg finds a man who introduces himself as Captain Henry Stewart hiding in her barn. After being injured while landing his parachute, Captain Stewart took refuge in the barn to escape the Germans looking for him. He came to warn Sylvie that Lieutenant Becker, a high-ranking Nazi officer, is looking for her. Meg thus learns that Captain Stewart is a British spy, and her mother has been working as a radio operator for the SOE, the same organization that her father is a part of. The Nazis have captured Harper, but upon learning about his engineering background, the latter put him to work in one of their factories. When he tried to escape, however, Harper was caught alongside his co-conspirator. Their German supervisor, Albert, helped Harper escape to a safe house. As a result, Captain Stewart was sent by the SOE to help Albert and his family flee to Spain in exchange for Harper’s location.

With Captain Stewart and Sylvie, who sprained her ankle trying to escape Nazi pursuers, both injured, the mission to rescue Harper first seems compromised. Soon after, Lieutenant Becker interrogates Sylvie and reveals his suspicions about Meg’s work for the resistance. Sylvie and Captain Stewart then decide to send Meg on the mission in their stead to keep her safe. She is tasked with helping Albert, his wife Liesel, and their son Jakob cross the border to Spain to rescue her father. Before she leaves, Captain Stewart gives Meg a letter from her father, which contains several codes that he intends for her to decipher.

Given Captain Stewart’s backpack, which is full of spying equipment, Meg embarks on a journey with the Durand family. She soon befriends Jakob, but he reveals that he, Albert, and Liesel are not actually related and are only using a pretense to avoid detection. Meg also believes that, through his coded letter, her father is telling her to meet him in Switzerland. She tries to convince the Durands to change their plans, but Liesel strongly disagrees.

The four of them eventually reach Paris, where they find a room for the night. During the night, they are awoken by bombings and alarms, and they are eventually able to take refuge in a crowded train station. Liesel tasks Jakob with getting them train tickets out of the city, and he comes back with tickets to Switzerland. While on the train, Meg has to hide from soldiers looking for a girl that fits her description. As she is hiding, she decrypts another of her father’s codes and finds fake passports for Switzerland for her, her mother, and her grandmother in the spine of her father’s book, confirming her suspicions.

Once they are back on the road and narrowly escape detection again, Meg and her travel companions are offered shelter for the night by a farmer and his wife. Meg uses their phone to call her mother, and her neighbor informs her that Sylvie and Meg’s grandmother have disappeared. Meg then decides to return home to find out what happened to them. She bids farewell to the Durands, but before going back to the family farm, she stops by her nearby childhood home. Thanks to her father’s coded instructions, she finds a valuable necklace hidden in the house. However, she also deciphers another part of Harper’s letter, which seems to warn her not to trust Albert.

Torn between helping her family and helping her friends, Meg goes back to the Durands and shares her suspicions with Jakob. The four of them continue on their journey together and soon reach the border between occupied France and the Forbidden Zone. They are guided through the mountain and Nazi checkpoints by a group of anonymous resistance fighters who call themselves Pierre. When a German soldier discovers Meg, she offers him her necklace in exchange for her life.

Meg and the Durands then begin crossing the mountains on skis, facing more and more dangerous encounters with Nazi patrols and a treacherous natural environment. Reflecting on her father’s codes, Meg realizes that she misinterpreted his warning and that he was, in fact, talking about Liesel. When she, Jakob, and Albert confront her, Liesel confesses that she has been working with Lieutenant Becker. The latter ordered her to infiltrate French resistance networks to map out their secret routes to Spain because Liesel’s daughter is held hostage by the German forces. In the end, Liesel tells Meg, Jakob, and Albert to tie her up to a tree, hoping to convince Lieutenant Becker that they overpowered her and escaped.

After a final confrontation with German pursuers, Meg and her friends finally reach Switzerland. There, they are offered asylum and wait for Captain Stewart to come get them. Indeed, he has taken Meg’s mother and grandmother to safety in London and sends some of his men to rescue Harper once Albert discloses his location. At the end of the story, Meg is reunited with her father and Jakob with his parents after Albert bribed the Nazi officers holding them prisoners, and they are ready to leave for London.