A Jewish Girl in Paris

Book excerpt: Inspired by true events and set against the backdrop of the World War II, A Jewish Girl in Paris is a powerful novel about forbidden love, adapted from a translation by Jamie Lee Searle. Paris, 1940: The City of Lights under German occupation. Judith, a young Jewish girl, meets Christian, the son of a wealthy banker and Nazi sympathizer whose family will never approve of the girl he has fallen in love with. As the Germans impose more and more restrictions on Jewish Parisians, the couple secretly plan to flee the country. But before they can make their escape, Judith disappears. Montreal, 1982. Shortly before his death, Lica Grunberg confesses to his daughter, Jacobina, that she has an older half-sister named Judith. Lica escaped the Nazis but lost all contact with his first-born daughter. Though she promises to find the sister she never knew, the search languishes for decades, until Jacobina is spurred on by her friend Béatrice, a French diplomat experiencing a painful midlife crisis. Soon the two women discover a dark family secret, stretching over two continents and six decades, that will change their lives forever. A deeply moving, dual-narrative novel of wartime secrets, A Jewish Girl in Paris is perfect for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.