Paige Bowers is a news and features writer whose work has appeared in TIME, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, People, Allure, and Glamour, among other outlets. A lifelong Francophile, she earned a master's degree in modern European history in 2012 and teaches continuing education classes at Louisiana State University about French history and culture. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Overnight Code tells the story of Raye Montague, an ambitious little girl from segregated Little Rock who spent a lifetime educating herself, both inside and outside of the classroom, so that she could become the person and professional she aspired to be. Where some saw roadblocks, Montague only saw hurdles that needed to be overcome. Her mindset helped her become the first person to draft a Naval ship design by computer, using a program she worked late nights to debug. She did this as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, all the while imbuing her son with the hard-won wisdom she had accumulated throughout the years. Equal parts coming-of-age tale, civil rights history, and reflection on the power of education, Overnight Code is a tale about the persistence and perseverance required to forge the life of your dreams when the odds against you seem insurmountable, and shows how one woman refused to let other people’s prejudices stand in the way of her success.
Based on interviews with family members, former associates, prominent historians, and never-before-seen papers written by Geneviève de Gaulle, The General’s Niece is the first English-language biography of Charles de Gaulle’s niece and daughter-figure, Geneviève. Journalist Paige Bowers leads readers through the remarkable life of this young woman who risked death to become one of the most devoted foot soldiers of the French Resistance. Beginning with small acts of defiance, she eventually ferried arms and false transit letters to fellow résistants and distributed the nation’s largest underground newspaper, until she was finally arrested and sent to the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp. The General’s Niece reveals the horrors the young de Gaulle witnessed and endured there that could have broken her spirit, but instead inspired her many remaining years of activism on behalf of former prisoners. Bowers details de Gaulle’s later years, during which she continued to stand up for what was humane and just, participating in campaigns to help France's neediest citizens and to force the Germans to pay restitution to a group of Polish women on whom the Nazis had performed crippling experiments at Ravensbrück.
