Two mothers, two daughters and an Allied bomb that falls where it shouldn’t in World War II Paris. The stage is set for Kristin Harmel’s latest historical fiction novel, “The Paris Daughter,” which comes out June 6.
It’s 1939, and young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends when they meet by chance on the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. They share an instant bond: Both are American expats living in Paris, and both are pregnant and expecting a child.
“Because they are Americans in Paris and because right after they meet, World War II begins, they find a lot of solace in each other,” Harmel said in a recent interview. “Once those babies are born, they become even closer. They raise the girls almost like sisters.”
When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation and is forced to flee Paris, she entrusts Juliette with her own daughter. More than a year later, when Elise returns to reunite with her family, she finds her friend’s home and neighborhood bombed to rubble and Juliette nowhere to be found.
“She’s told that her daughter has died, and there is a headstone in the cemetery for her, but Juliette has disappeared without a trace, and Elise has absolutely no answers about what happened to her daughter,” Harmel said.
Harmel, who’s been writing about WWII for almost a decade, said families being under threat of bombs was something that kept coming up in her research from previous novels.
“It just piqued my interest and made me want to explore what that would have been like, to live in an occupied country where you never knew what was going to fall from the sky or how long you had to get to safety,” she said.
There’s also an Easter egg of sorts that ties into Harmel’s bestselling 2020 novel “The Book of Lost Names,” about a young Jewish woman who works with the French Resistance to forge papers for children escaping the Nazis. The town where Elise winds up after she’s forced to flee Paris is the same fictional town where “The Book of Lost Names” is set.
“For readers of that book who had asked for a sequel or who had wanted another glimpse of that world, this felt like a really nice way to do that but in a story that was fully its own,” Harmel said.
Join Harmel for a “Books Over Drinks” event from 7:30-9 p.m. June 8 at M. Judson Booksellers in downtown Greenville. Tickets are $35 and include admission, a book-inspired cocktail and a copy of the book. Visit mjudsonbooks.com/events for more information.
