By Avia Stoller —
The Michael J. Colligan History Project brought guest author and journalist Sonia Purnell to talk about her biography A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, a New York Times Bestseller that tells the story of Virginia Hall. Sonia Purnell also introduced her newly released book Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power Seduction, and Intrigue. Both books were available to purchase at the event. The bustling attendees lined up at the end of the book discussion to get their books signed by Sonia Purnell herself. The event was held at the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center in Miami Regionals Hamilton.
Who was Virginia Hall, the “woman of no importance”?
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War
II, written by Sonia Purnell in 2019, was a part of the “One City One Book” program in Hamilton.
Readers across Butler County attended the event, eager to hear about a hero. This biography
told the virtually unknown story of Virginia Hall, an American spy in World War II, who despite
being underestimated her whole life, helped the Allies during the war.
Sonia Purnell prefaced the book discussion with an introduction to Virginia Hall’s upbringing,
and what shaped Virginia Hall to become the spy she was. Virginia was raised in Maryland, with
a sharp eagerness to do more than be a homestead wife. Virginia faced pressure from her
mother, Barbara Hull, to marry a well-off gentleman who could revive the slowly declining state
of Virginia’s childhood home. In childhood, Virginia found passion in the outdoors despite this
love being an “unbecoming” trait for women during the 1920s and 30s. During young adulthood,
Virginia lost her left leg in a hunting accident when she accidentally tripped and shot her gun.
Sonia Purnell then discussed how being an amputee made Virginia Hall’s dream career as a
foreign service agent nearly impossible—that is, right until World War II began.
Virginia Hall worked with France, Britain, and the U.S. as an undercover spy for a total of three
and a half years during World War II. Sonia Purnell stated that during the war, most spies would
live around two to three months while undercover. Virginia was a notable jailbreaker, freeing
many war captives. She also pioneered many spy tactics, and did all of this with a limp from the
wooden prosthetic leg that haphazardly imitated the left leg she lost during the hunting accident.
During the book discussion, Ms. Purnell concluded that “in the Second World War, without
talking about Virginia Hall and what she did at one point, you know, the Brits and the Americans
agreed that the whole Allies intelligence operation in France, would have fallen apart without
her.”
After this session, the discussion was open to questions. One audience member in attendance asked, “You stumbled across Virginia. How do you go from stumbling across something to a huge
commitment of writing a book?” The author responded, “My dad was in what he used to call
‘cloak and dagger’ for a bit, and so I always wanted to write about a spy, and I noticed that there
was an American woman mentioned usually very briefly, but with exciting details like she had a
wooden leg and blew up bridges. Really, I [knew I] must find out more and then I’d read a little
about subjects and then I had that trip to the National Archives.” Purnell then continued about
the struggles of decoding the documents and the people who helped her along the way,
revealing information and stories about Virginia Hall.
Another audience member asked, “If you had the opportunity to sit down for a coffee with her …
I’m sure you have so many questions for her, but what would you ask her first? Ms. Purnell then
answered, “How did you deal with your fear? The fear must have been off the scale, not just for
a day or a week, but for years. How do you deal with that?”
At the end of the book discussion, the author recited her mission and her reason for writing A
Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II:
“Extraordinary women have been misunderstood, overlooked, misrepresented by history,
because this isn’t what you might say a ‘feminist history.’ [It’s] an accurate history”. Sonia
Purnell devoted years of life researching the story of Virginia Hall. Why? Because before
publishing the book, very few knew about her existence, and this raises an important question:
Who else has been kept out of the history books? Why, and for how long?