Overview

In the vein of Pam Jenoff and Kristen Harmel comes an epic historical novel of love and loss spanning postwar 1946 France when Israeli agents roamed the countryside to rescue hidden Jewish orphans to the 1969 daring escape of the Israeli boats of Cherbourg. In the early 1940s, as the horrors of the war close in on France, we meet Claudette Pelletier, talented seamstress and lover of romance novels. Born disabled and unable to walk to school, Claudette grew up illiterate until a kind Jewish peddler in her village taught her to read. Years later, as the Vichy government hunts the Jews, the peddler and his son Raphaël arrive at Claudette's home. She hides the father and son, and after a whirlwind and desperate romance between Claudette and Raphaël, he and his father are forced to flee, leaving a pregnant Claudette devastated. When the Nazis invade the Free Zone shortly after the birth of her child, Claudette is forced to make a heartbreaking choice and escapes to Spain, leaving her baby in the care of his nursemaid. By the time Claudette is able to return years later, he has disappeared. Unbeknownst to his anguished mother, the child has been rescued by Youth Aliya, a group of Israeli agents combing the French countryside in search of Jewish orphans. In 1969, twenty-year-old Israeli intelligence officer Sharon Bloomenthal, still grieving the loss of her boyfriend in a drowned military submarine, is recruited by naval officer Daniel Yarden to assist with the Cherbourg project. Upon learning that the officer's past in Youth Aliya is linked to that of her late mother, Sharon sets out to track Danny's extraordinary journey from his quaint French village to Israel--all the while hoping to learn more of her mother's identity and life.

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Talia Carner is the former publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women's economic forums. This is her fifth novel.

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