I started to read this book yesterday morning and was finished by this afternoon. It was, to me and I'm sure to anyone who reads it, absolutely shocking and a real wakeup call. It's fiction and yet it is probably what happened to more than a few Jewish children during the Paris roundup on July 16, 1942. And in other events during the reign of terror.
Writing about one particular child made it so much more real. I have never been able to comprehend what happened. I see pictures and I hear stories and yet my mind won't let me see it as real. I think part of why I was unable to put the book down was that it was about one human being, what she was feeling and experiencing.
An American journalist is given a job researching the Roundup on the 60th anniversary. She had never heard of it and the research, and Sarah in particular, became an obsession to her. There was a secret tie in with her husband's family, a french family who had rented the apartment Sarah and her parents had been taken from during the roundup. Now her husband was renovating the same apartment that had been in his family since 1942.
I never know how much to say because I don't want to give away the story but I will say that this is a must read, especially for the younger generation. We need to teach our children/grandchildren what happened to ensure that it never happens again.
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