This author was recommended to me by my friend Nan. I had said that I like history novels and she said that this author writes them, and she liked her very much. I have been getting some of my reads from the library which is so convenient, but I love the feel of real books in my hand. I also like to refer back to them when writing a review, so it hasn’t stopped me from buying actual paperbacks. Many times I purchase used also.

Here is my review:

Setting is Paris 1939, on the verge of WWII.

Two women, who are American but married Frenchmen.

Elise – is an artist, carves wood and paints and her husband is a well-known artist.

Juliette has a family owned small bookstore along with her husband and children.

These two women are both pregnant and due very close together. They meet in the park one day because Elise has an episode and faints. Juliette came over to render some assistance and eventually she gets Elise back to the bookstore and has the doctor come and examine her and then they become fast friends after that. They both have healthy baby girls who are months apart and they grow up like sisters together. Juliette also has two other children who are boys, and she had a daughter earlier who only lived 13 days and it buried in a nearby cemetery where she visits often.

As the war gets closer to their area Elises husband has been meeting with others underground against the Nazi’s and other bad players of WWII. There are times where he is gone for days, and this is a bone of contention between the two of them because she would like him to be home with them. One day he comes to her with papers that have changed her identity and their daughters also. When she examines the papers, she realizes that the daughters’ papers say a totally different name than hers. He has told her that she needs to get away because she has his last and if she and the daughter are captured then they will be killed. They are looking for him. She needs to leave the daughter in Paris with the papers and go hours away from there.

This tore her up and couldn’t imagine leaving her and walking away. There was a woman in their neighborhood who was Jewish and she made arraignments for her two children to be taken somewhere to be cared for and stay, hopefully, safe. She then went herself away also and finding another place that she had stayed for most of the war until someone ratted them out and they were captured and sent to a concentration camp.

Elise left her daughter with her friend Juliette and family to care for like their own. It was not an easy break at all like you can imagine and she found her way to Ambergene, France to find herself caring for children in a farmhouse where children were kept safe from the war. In the Authors notes at the end of the book she visited this area while writing the book and there was an actual place where the children were kept, and I am sure there were many of these places throughout Europe.

In Paris, back in the little bookstore all was relatively safe and quiet until the Renault Plant was bombed because it was making trucks for the Germans who occupied the country. A stray bomb missed its mark and hit the bookstore destroying it and most of the people in it.

The second half of the book focuses on the characters after the war and how their lives changed and what they did to live. Some moved on, others were mentally challenged, and some had still terrible things happen to them.

It took me a chapter get into the book but then it took off for me and I enjoyed it. Be sure to read the authors notes. It is a good historical novel that was released in June 2023.