After seeing so many recommendations for "The Paris Daughter", even though not my normal genre, I put it on hold. I decided to give it a try because of the rave reviews. Part way I closed the book, as it was so heart wrenching and we had recently had a loss in our family. Holding it and trying to decide whether to keep reading I read Martha Hall Kelly's comment "Tore up my heart and put it back together again". I had to continue with hopes of my heart being put back together. Kristin Harmel's beautiful writing kept me going.

She cannot take her baby daughter *Mathilde* (2 years old) with her on the run.

In a desperate choice, she entrusts Mathilde to Juliette. Juliette promises: "I will love her as my own. One mother to another."

Juliette now has four small children in the apartment above the bookstore: her three - *Emma, Theo, and baby Lucie* - plus Mathilde. Mathilde and Lucie are best friends, like their mothers.

*1943 - The Bomb:*

Nowhere is safe, not even a quiet bookshop. During an Allied bombing raid on Paris, a bomb falls directly on Juliette's neighborhood. The bookstore and apartment are destroyed.

Elise, hiding in the countryside, hears the news after the Liberation. She rushes back to Paris in *1945*.

She finds rubble. The shop is gone.

She learns that Juliette and *one child* survived: baby Lucie. Juliette's husband Paul, her two older children Emma and Theo, and - she is told - little Mathilde, were killed in the bombing.