The Paris Daughter
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4.4 • 35 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Instant New York Times bestseller!
“A gorgeous, gut-wrenching” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author) historical novel about two mothers facing unthinkable choices as the Nazis invade France—from the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Harmel.
Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change.
When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life—her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves, and, when a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it.
When the war finally ends, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble—and Juliette nowhere to be found. What happened to her daughter in those last, terrible moments? Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace, taking all the answers with her. Elise’s desperate search leads her to New York—and to Juliette—one final, fateful time.
A sweeping celebration of resilience, motherhood, and love, The Paris Daughter is “historical fiction at its best” (Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The friendship between two American expats in WWII Paris leads to life-altering events in the powerful latest from Harmel (The Forest of Vanishing Stars). It's 1939, and Elise LeClair, an American artist married to French artist Olivier, is pregnant with their first child and has newly befriended Juliette Foulon, an American bookseller who is expecting her third child with her husband, Paul. After the Germans invade and LeClairs' daughter, Mathilde, is born, Elise begs Oliver to keep a lower profile with his work with the Resistance, but in 1941 he's arrested and beaten to death by the Nazis. His art dealer tells Elise the Germans are looking for her, forcing her to flee and leave Mathilde with Juliette. After the war, Elise finds the Foulons' bookstore reduced to rubble, and she learns that only Juliette and her youngest child Lucie survived the Allied bomb that killed Paul, their two older children, and Mathilde. Overcome with guilt, Elise struggles to move forward as an artist. Years later, Elise tracks down Juliette and Lucie in New York City, where her effort to seek closure is particularly wrenching. Harmel brings the novel's historical moments to life through deep research and enriching historical facts, and she conveys an acute sense of her characters' emotions as they face tragedy upon tragedy. This is Harmel's best to date.
