The Paris daughter

In a complex story of love and redemption, the lives of three women and their children are entwined during WWII and the 20 years that follow. Juliette and Elise, American expats living in Paris, have a friendship that begins when both are pregnant. Ruth, who is Jewish, is in greater peril and sends her children away, aiming to escape Paris herself. Elise's artist husband is tortured and killed by the Nazis, forcing her to escape as well, leaving her daughter, Mathilde, to become part of Juliette's family. The family book shop is destroyed by bombing; only Juliette and daughter Lucie survive. The three women emerge at the end of the war, damaged in their own ways but still connected. Elise mourns by making and selling wood carvings, Ruth and her children live with her for a time, and Juliette relocates to New York but with her mind still in the past. The story finishes in NYC in 1960. Wartime drama is condensed to the personal level here, with much to recommend this to the public-library audience and book-discussion groups.

The friendship between two American expats in WWII Paris leads to life-altering events in the powerful latest from Harmel (The Forest of Vanishing Stars). It's 1939, and Elise LeClair, an American artist married to French artist Olivier, is pregnant with their first child and has newly befriended Juliette Foulon, an American bookseller who is expecting her third child with her husband, Paul. After the Germans invade and LeClairs' daughter, Mathilde, is born, Elise begs Oliver to keep a lower profile with his work with the Resistance, but in 1941 he's arrested and beaten to death by the Nazis. His art dealer tells Elise the Germans are looking for her, forcing her to flee and leave Mathilde with Juliette. After the war, Elise finds the Foulons' bookstore reduced to rubble, and she learns that only Juliette and her youngest child Lucie survived the Allied bomb that killed Paul, their two older children, and Mathilde. Overcome with guilt, Elise struggles to move forward as an artist. Years later, Elise tracks down Juliette and Lucie in New York City, where her effort to seek closure is particularly wrenching. Harmel brings the novel's historical moments to life through deep research and enriching historical facts, and she conveys an acute sense of her characters' emotions as they face tragedy upon tragedy. This is Harmel's best to date. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (June)