Uncovering the Story Behind Splintered Shadows
Splintered Shadows: Recovering a French Résistante is an unconventional adoptee-search narrative told against the backdrop of World War II. After the War, Andrée married an American serviceman, left France, and carried the story of her earlier life to her grave. Her adoptive daughter, Marilyn Moriarty, was left with only fragments—photographs, names, and unanswered questions that hinted at a past far more complicated than it appeared.
Moriarty’s search begins with a single name on a 1945 photograph and leads her across Europe, uncovering a hidden life shaped by secrecy, imprisonment, and dangerous choices in Nazi-occupied France. As she pieces together her mother’s personal and political double lives, the narrative explores pressures faced by women under occupation and the lasting consequences of histories deliberately concealed. Moving between past and present, Splintered Shadows is a powerful story of discovery, reckoning, and making peace with a past inherited but never fully known.
Publication Date and Details
Whether you’re interested in World War II history, genealogy, or untold personal stories, Splintered Shadows: Recovering a French Résistante provides a thoughtful exploration of one daughter’s search to better understand her mother’s past. This publication will be released on August 25, 2026.
To learn more or preorder your copy today, visit UNG Press Books.
About the Author
Marilyn F. Moriarty is an award-winning writer and professor whose work spans creative nonfiction, fiction, and literary scholarship. Her writing appears in leading journals including The Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, and River Teeth, with three essays recognized as “Notable” in The Best American Essays. A recipient of the AWP Prize, Faulkner-Wisdom Gold Medal, Peregrine Prize, Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and University of Utah Novella Prize, Moriarty has been a Visiting Writer at the American Academy in Rome. She holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Irvine, and taught literature at Hollins University, where she was the Inaugural Berry professor of Liberal Studies and the recipient of the Herta Freitag Award for Critical and Creative Achievement.
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