Where Goodness Thrives

“Could there be communities that were somehow resistant to violence, persistent in decency?” That question, which drives Maggie Paxson’s one-of-a-kind book, sounds wishful, especially these days. If ever a place could claim to be an incubator of rare goodness, Paxson seems to have found it: a small plateau in south-central France called Vivarais-Lignon, where a long tradition of extraordinary kindness to strangers peaked during the Nazi occupation. A forebear of hers, Paxson discovered, took charge of one in the fall of 1942.