THE BOOK of LOST NAMES

Harmel, Kristin. THE BOOK OF LOST NAMES. Gallery, 2020.

Found in the condo library. Another book set in France during WW II, about forgers who help people, especially Jewish children, escape to Nazis to freedom in Switzerland. Eva, an octogenarian widow living in Florida, sees a book she once knew and used in a article in a New York paper and flies to Germany to retrieve it. Flashes back to her early life in Paris, the flight to Southern France, her decision to use her art talent to work on forged documents. The hardest part for me was the mother's deliberate undermining and guilting of her daughter's actions. And the sentimentality. And the immaturity of the main character, although that too could be realistic. It seems the history is relatively fact-based.