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The Book of Lost Names
eBook - 2020
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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 New York Times 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.
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
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 New York Times 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.
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
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Weezie5431
Feb 18, 2021
Eva, Florida librarian sees rare book in article about books stolen by Germans. Goes to Berlin to claim it. During WW2, after her Polish/Jewish father was killed, Eva fled from Paris to village town where she helped evacuate Jewish children under assumed names. Their real names were recorded in code in an old religious book, so their real names wouldn't be forgotten. Love story attached.
Good read.
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Add a CommentSaw in AARP - Author of The Nightengale
A spellbinding book that kept me sitting in one place, reading one page at a time - completely immersed with the story being told. I was fascinated by the amazing story told within the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, French Resistance at the level of one cell and a love story -- of different kinds of love - love for parents, friends, children, lovers. Highly recommended as a wonderful, good and fast read.
It held my interest as a story, but this novel is merely one of a long list of novels that I consider to be in a genre I call "sexy Holocaust" literature. It's a disturbing, money-making trend. I'm a believer that if you are going to write about such a horrific event, you better actually have something to say. The information about forgery and the French resistance was interesting, but the love story and the main character's relationship with her parents felt forced and overdone.
This book was very informative and the characters were so exceptionally portrayed. I never HATED a character in a book as much as I did in this one. I will not give it away who it was. I fell in love with the forgers and the priest and am so lucky to have read it..
I wish I had read the author’s endnotes first. Billed as historical fiction, the subject matter is not fiction. The atrocities and hardships and The Book of Lost Names are secondary to the romances of Eva’s parents, of Eva herself and fleetingly, of her co-worker. I think the book would have been powerful with the emphases flipped.
Excellent read. Well constructed tale. Fell in love with title character. Unexpected plot twists kept my interest.
Halocaust Lit. Good read.
Holocaust Genre 4* Nazi's persecution of Jews loses identity of children.
The Book of Lost Names written by Kristin Harmel is a story of family, faith, and fighting the good fight. I was not familiar with the skill and finesse required of a forger in WWII. But this story shares insight of Eva who has a talent for forgery. I was taken in with Eva's idea to have a book of lost names.
This book gives such an interesting insight on a part of the resistance during WWII that I hadn't thought about before...forging documents. Of course, this would be important to help people escape. Kristin Harmel does an excellent job of showing this side of the fight while mixing it with love, tragedy, parental disappointment, and hope. It's not a fast-moving book but was compelling enough to keep reading and racing towards the end.