In 1942, while babysitting a neighbor’s children, Eva Traube secretly sees her father, who is a Polish Jew, arrested when the Nazis begin picking up the Jews in Paris. Realizing the danger, she and her mother flee to Aurignon, a city in the Free Zone of southern France, while Eva works on a plan to free her father. Instead, Eva becomes part of the French Resistance of World War II, working with a covert forging group that creates documents to help Jewish children escape across the French border to Switzerland. The forging ring is run in the library of the Eglise Saint-Alban Church and is headed by Pere’ Clement, a Catholic priest. Nearly the whole town is involved in the underground forging ring, and many of them have an alias just in case they are caught.
Eva is trained by another forger, Remy, and they decide that the children who are taken across the border need to be remembered by their real names. They begin encoding the children’s names and aliases in a rare book, Epitres et Evangiles. Eventually, Remy and Eva fall in love, and Remy begins bringing children across the border instead of forging documents. The Nazis finally learn of their secret operation, and the pair flees Aurignon, escorting children into Switzerland. In the process, Remy and Eva part ways.
Years later, in 2005, Eva Abrams, now widowed, is working as a part-time librarian at the public library in Winter Park, Florida. She notices a New York Times newspaper article about a man named Otto Kuhn, a librarian who lives in Berlin. His life’s mission is to return a million books looted from libraries by the Nazis, to their rightful Jewish owners. In the article, she sees her book, Eptres et Evangiles, and knows she must travel to Berlin to obtain the book. She hopes that Remy has left a coded message for her in the book and wants closure from World War II, which took so much from her and her family.
In The Book of Lost Names, Kristin Harmel has combined World War II history and the French Resistance with romance, suspense, and mystery. The story is compelling, hopeful, and filled with hope and perseverance. It is an honest portrayal of what people’s lives are like when their freedoms are taken away. It is evident that the author did meticulous research on the forging rings and the libraries that were looted during World War II.
Not just Eva, but all the female characters, including the boarding house owner and other townspeople, are portrayed as strong and courageous. It is heartwarming and astonishing to see how a whole Catholic town works together to benefit hundreds of innocent Jewish children.
This novel received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Hand it to readers who enjoy historical fiction and to fans of World War II stories. I highly recommend it for public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!
Thank you to Edelweiss and Gallery Books for allowing me to read and review this book.
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