Monica: Herion of the Danish Resistance

The first chapters of London-born Monica Massy-Beresford's (1894-1944) life read like a romance, the last like a spy novel. She grew up a pampered child in the pastoral splendor of her family's ancestral home in Ireland--and exchanged it for the Danish estate of Jorgan de Wichfeld, the man many years her senior who became her husband. While married to him, she had a love affair with their neighbor, Kurt von Reventlow (later wed to Barbara Hutton). But this privileged and beautiful woman would eventually meet her death in Germany's Waldheim Prison, convicted of crimes against the Reich. For when the Nazi boot ground down, she joined the Danish Resistance movement, serving as a regional organizer and courting considerable risk when hiding arms and refugees in the attic and crypt of her home; her sad fate is a foregone conclusion. Savoring the drama of these events, Sutherland ( The Princess of Siberia ) does her best work in portraying an era, rather than in characterizing this unique, courageous woman, who listened to the dictates of her conscience and met the indignities of imprisonment with the style of a duchess. (July)