Join acclaimed novelists, Kristin Harmel and Jennifer Rosner, as they talk about historical fiction in general, and specifically about their recent books! Harmel’s The Paris Daughter is a gripping story about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation. Rosner’s heart-wrenching tale, Once We Were Home, is inspired by true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.
MELTON CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES at THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY is Gramercy’s Community Partner in presenting this exclusive Gramercy@Home author program!
Registration is on Eventbrite for this live streamed event. The purchase of either book waives the $5 registration fee.
THE PARIS DAUGHTER: 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.
More than a year later, with the war finally ending, 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.
The Paris Daughter is a sweeping celebration of resilience, motherhood, and love.
Kristin Harmel is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels including The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names, The Room on Rue Amélie, and The Sweetness of Forgetting. She is published in more than thirty languages and is the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series, Friends & Fiction. She lives in Orlando, Florida.
ONCE WE WERE HOME: Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves.
Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of quiet concealment. When a relative seeks to retrieve him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem.
Renata, a post-graduate student in archaeology, has spent her life unearthing secrets from the past--except for her own. After her mother’s death, Renata’s grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered, including why they fled Germany so quickly when Renata was a little girl.
Two decades later, they are each building lives for themselves, trying to move on from the trauma and loss that haunts them. But as their stories converge in Israel, in unexpected ways, they must each ask where and to whom they truly belong.
Once We Were Home evocatively reveals a little known history and raises questions of complicity and responsibility, belonging and identity, good intentions and unforeseen consequences.
Jennifer Rosner is the author of the novel, The Yellow Bird Sings, a finalist for two National Jewish Book Awards; the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard, about raising her deaf daughters in a hearing, speaking world; and a children's book, The Mitten String, which is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifer's writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, The Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family.
