Lucie Aubrac (1912-2007), of Catholic and peasant background, was teaching history in a Lyon girls'' school and newly married to Raymond, a Jewish engineer, when World War II broke out and divided France. The couple, living in the Vichy zone, soon joined the Resistance movement in opposition to the Nazis and their collaborators.

Outwitting the Gestapo is Lucie''s harrowing account of her participation in the Resistance: of the months when, though pregnant, she planned and took part in raids to free comrades—including her husband, under Nazi death sentence—from the prisons of Klaus Barbie, the infamous Butcher of Lyon.

Her book is also the basis for the 1997 French movie, Lucie Aubrac, which was released in the United States in 1999.