THE DIOR SECRET by Natasha Lester

Typical Natasha Lester – following the successful pattern of her last few novels, this is set alternately in the times of WWII and present day, backdrop of the war, fashion, resistance and so on. Why mess with a good recipe? Kat works in costume preservation,  lives in Melbourne, separated from her husband, sharing custody of their daughter. Her grandmother Margaux now in her nineties, lives nearby. At her grandmother’s request, on a work trip to Europe,  she goes to Cornwall to check on the former’s house. She finds a wardrobe full of Dior fashion, dozens of beautiful couture garments beginning with Dior’s first collection in 1947. The second thread of the story takes us back to the years before WWII and then the war itself. It belongs to Skye, a young English woman who follows in her mother’s footsteps learning to fly, joining the Women’s Air Transport Auxiliary transporting planes between air bases in England – high risk not just physically flying, but also with the unpleasant, nasty, bullying sexist behaviour within the air force to the women pilots, and also in society at large. Most of what the author writes here is based on fact and memoirs of women pilots of this time. Skye reconnects with Nicholas, an American pilot who spent part of his childhood growing up with Skye and her sister Liberty, and she also meets Margaux, a young French woman who is Nicholas’ fiancé. Skye is recruited to become a spy in France working with the Resistance, and you already know where all this is going to lead. What happens to these women, the connection to the Dior fashion house and to Kat decades later makes for an excellent story with plenty of twists. You think you know where it is going, then it goes in a different direction.