In 1944 Capucine Benoit's freedom ended when she was arrested by the Nazis during the occupation of Paris. She was saved from deportation to a camp because she convinced the Nazis she had artistic talents. She and hundreds of others were imprisoned in Levitan which was a department store. There they sorted and cleaned property stolen from Jewish homes. Her time there was life-changing. She struggled to reconcile the choices she had made in her life. While this is a work of historical fiction, Levitan was a very real place. While imprisoned, her estranged and now adult daughter Mathilde begins to question what is going on around her. At a young age, Mathilde was sent to live with her paternal grandparents who gave her a life of privilege. During the occupation, she and her grandparents did not suffer, but those around her did. When she learned about the existence of the Resistance and the arrest of her mother, her world changes.
The story is told in the voices of the two women. Readers are transported back to a time filled with fear, terror, and chaos. One wrong word or action could result in death. In this impeccably detailed slice of history, readers are given an inside look into who Capucine and Mathilde were as well as whom they become.
I found this to be a riveting story that is touched by pain and grief, but also by love and hope. It is an epic narrative about family and courage that is well worth telling. Highly recommended.
In Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented artisan must fight for her life by designing for her enemies. From New York Times bestselling author Juliet Blackwell comes an extraordinary story about holding on to hope when all seems lost.
Capucine Benoit works alongside her father to produce fans of rare feathers, beads, and intricate pleating for the haute couture fashion houses. But after the Germans invade Paris in June 1940, Capucine and her father must focus on mere survival—until they are betrayed to the secret police and arrested for his political beliefs. When Capucine saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her connections to Parisian design houses, she is sent to a little-known prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Lévitan department store.
There, hundreds of prisoners work to sort through, repair, and put on display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods looted from Jewish homes and businesses. Forced to wait on German officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s.
Capucine’s estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her conservative paternal grandparents, who are prospering under the Nazi occupation. But after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of Paris’s Résistance fighters. As her mind opens to new ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her unconventional mother in a different light.
When an old acquaintance arrives to go “shopping” at the Lévitan department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming act of kindness could have dangerous consequences.
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