The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel

 Elise and Juliette meet in Paris in Juliette's bookshop. Both of them are well into their pregnancies and Juliette found Elise while she was having early contractions. Juliette already had three children, two boys and a girl, while this was Elise's first child. 

Their friendship grew from this event. Both mothers gave birth to daughters, who even look similar to each other. Ruth, a Jewish woman, is also in the friendship who has two children of her own. 

When the Nazis take over France, the situation becomes dire for Ruth and her children. Ruth makes the extremely painful decision to send her children on one of the Resistance lines to be safely kept in Switzerland until the war is over. The children will be given new names and false identity papers in order to save their lives.

Elise is married to a high-profile artist with Communist leanings. He is eventually arrested and killed, being opposed to the Nazi regime. This puts Elise's life in jeopardy as the Nazis will think she shares her husband's ideology. But fleeing for her life with her two-year-old daughter will put both of their lives at risk. She has to make another kind of painful decision - to ask Juliette to keep Mathilde as if she were her own daughter. What with rationing and other strictures under Nazi control, this is not an easy ask, but Juliette agrees,

Elise runs for her life alone and agonizing over the loss of her daughter.

Everything goes as well as possible for Juliette's family until a stray bomb falls on her bookstore. Her husband, both sons, and one of the girls die in the explosion. Juliette buries her family and Mathilde in the family plot and moves to New York to begin again with the one remaining child.

Please read this book, as Kristin Harmel is an outstanding storyteller and I don't want to spoil everything by telling you more than I have done already.

I borrowed the book from my local library, but it is very reasonable on Amazon Kindle. If you follow the link I am posting here, You will get to read the story and I will get a few pennies, as this is an affiliate link.  The Paris Daughter

Thank you for visiting with me. Happy reading.

Kathi