Book Review – The Book Of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Historical Fiction At Its Best

Description

Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel from the international bestselling author of the “epic and heart-wrenching World War II tale” (Alyson Noel, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Winemaker’s Wife.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

Details

• Title: The Book of Lost Names
  • Author: Kristin Harmel
  • Publisher: Gallery Books
  • Publication: Date: July 21, 2020
  • Page Count: 400
  • Reading Group Questions
  • Excerpt

My Thoughts

First, let me say that I’d put this right up there as one of the best historical novels that I’ve read. The timeline goes between 2005 and the early 1940s. The latter is what the majority of the story is about, Germany’s occupation of France.

The story begins in 2005 in Florida where Eva Traube, 86, works at the local library. When she sees a newspaper story about a man in Germany who is returning rare books looted by the Nazis to WWII survivors, it nearly takes her breath away.

And with a bang, the story takes off.

Eva, the child of Polish-Jewish parents, was born in France. So when things start looking bad concerning Germany’s treatment of Jewish people, her parents hope Eva’s home country will make a difference.

As I mentioned, my interest was piqued almost immediately with this story. In fact, I started reading in the evening and I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to shut the book.

Yet later, when I rethought the very first part of the book, where the family was reacting to their fear regarding Germans. It felt very familiar to other stories that we’ve all heard and read about. I decided that my excitement about the beginning had to be due to Kristin Harmel’s incredible talent as an author. She was able to take this well-known history to new levels in order to create suspense, empathy, and interest.

The book will touch your heart and be a story that you are sure to remember. It flows with both fiction and historical facts intermingled beautifully. If you are interested in Women’s’ Fiction, WWII Historical Fiction, or Romance, I don’t think it’s possible to go wrong with this book.

What Concerned Me

Not a thing.

What I Liked

Harmel created characters that I understood through their actions, not because of her descriptions. They were believable and I was empathetic to what they were experiencing.

This is yet another author I will be following.

My thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for an ARC and the ability to post a review of my opinion regarding the book.

Rating

About the Author

Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling author of a dozen novels including The Book of Lost Names, The Winemaker’s Wife, The Room on Rue Amélie, and The Sweetness of Forgetting. She is also the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series, Friends and Fiction. She lives in Orlando, Florida.