Recommended by the Reviewers Club
This fascinating story is set in Paris in 1939 with later links to the US. Two young mothers become fast friends as the shadow of war creeps across Europe. Elise is an artist with a little girl, and Juliette, along with her husband and 3 children own a bookshop. When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with her little girl and escapes to the US. A bomb falls on the bookshop and only Juliette and one little girl survive.
More than a year later when the war finally ended, Elise returns to Paris only to find the bookstore reduced to rubble and no Juliette to be found. Juliette was, in fact, in New York and had opened a new bookshop — an exact copy of her Paris store. She was still badly affected by her past and she often had conversations with her dead husband (and the children), total living in the past. She believed the child that survived was her daughter, but it became clear she is Elise’s daughter, an excellent artist.
The author hoped that this book would be an affirmation of the human capacity for goodness, strength, and faith in the face of adversity. The terror of ordinary people during WW2.
4.5/5 Stars