Praise for Helen Button

In Spaulding's intricate debut novel Helen Button, she deftly weaves a dual narrative timeline echoing between dangerous Vichy France during WWII and political upheaval in modern day Paris to tell an atmospheric tale of love and loss, war and death, across multiple generations. A tour de force of extraordinary historical detail, fresh perspectives on well-known figures like Gertrude Stein, and exquisite, lyrical writing, Helen Button is a beautiful examination of fate, survival, and how harrowing moral choices in wartime can have far-reaching effects. The story of Hélène Bouton will stay with me for a long time.

Kali White VanBaale, author of The Monsters We Make and The Good Divide

Helen Button is a carefully crafted, compelling narrative that illuminates little known aspects of World War Two while also drawing parallels with political crises in postcolonial France. Told through the point of view of Hélène, the imagined French-American housekeeper of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the narrative focuses on the plight of children during wartime as well as during times of social and political unrest. In both cases, whether the children are Jewish victims of the Holocaust or Algerian immigrant youth in the impoverished Parisian suburbs in 2005, children are criminalized for merely being who they are. At the same time, the novel forces the reader to examine the ambivalent roles of Stein and Toklas, who were Jewish lesbians and avant-garde artists, in Vichy France when French authorities collaborated with their Nazi occupiers. As readers, we are left wondering why Stein wrote articles that appear to promote the collaborators, even though she is remembered as a supporter of the French Resistance. And we also question whether Stein inadvertently effected the death of 44 Jewish children who were taken to Auschwitz. Besides struggling with these troubling questions, the reader will acquire a deeper understanding of the war and Stein, whose experimental poetry helped shape the Modernist Literary Era.

Kathleen Renk, author of Rosetti Diaires and Vindicated

"Those of us who love France will find this delightful and moving novel especially meaningful. By shedding light on the troubling chapters of France's past and the challenging realities of its present, Carol Roh Spaulding deepens and complicates our understanding of the country. After all, no object of our affection is perfect-it's through knowing the flaws that our love becomes more honest."

--Wini Moranville, author of Everyday French Cooking: Modern French Cuisine Made Simple, and the memoir, Love Is My Favorite Flavor.