Kristen Harmel has painted a picture of World War II that takes us behind the scenes. Behind the bombing and strafing, killing and the horrors of this dreadful war. Her central character of Eva Traube is in her 86 in Chapter One of this powerful story. From a library in America, she sees a picture of her Book of Lost Names in the New York Times. It is in a library in Berlin. In Chapter Two and sixty years later, she is living in Paris with her parents. The Nazi occupation had arrived and is becoming more uncomfortable with new rules and the yellow stars of anyone Jewish. Eva is warned by an old school friend of a coming round up of 20,000 Jews. She does not believe him and tells her father, who works as a typewriter repairman. From there, her life and the lives of her parents spin out of control. Her father is arrested. Eva and her mother were safe from arrest but only temporarily. To escape Paris, with the benefit of her first forgery, they arrive in a small town that is a ‘safe’ town. This town hid hundreds of children and adults waiting to be surreptitiously taken to Switzerland and freedom.
Eva tells her story from beginning to end. All the details of the trek from Paris, how Eva and her mother, Mamusia, have responded so very differently to their situation defines the depth of trauma that they each experienced. It had never occurred to me before that the false identification papers had to be created by real flesh and blood people. Papers created so meticulously, down to the inks, paper and forms, that they could fool the most astute officials. Many people were saved because of these dedicated people. In Eva Traube’s world, many hundreds of children were saved, the focus of their work. Eva and Rémy worked tirelessly to create the needed documents. Their relationship develops past their work, but is halted because of the war. Eva loses everyone and everything.
We all know how those caught in this or any war end - some survive and some do not. Identities are lost and lives are lost. Eva feels responsible for lost in her war. This is her story, beautifully and poignantly told by Eva Traube through Kristin Harmel’s skillful pen.
“Life turns on the decisions we make,
the single moments that transform everything.”
~ Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names
Title: The Book of Lost Names
Author: Kristin Harmel
Copyright: 2020
Publisher: Gallery Books - An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Type: Fiction
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-1-9821-5236-9
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3191-3 (ebook)
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