I just finished reading this book, and it hit me harder than anything I've read in a long time. I'm not even sure why. I always knew about the holocaust, although I didn't know much about France's hidden children. It's frightening, but the book is not all horrible. There are loving moments, safe micro-moments. Magic. Trees, flowers, mountains, stars. It makes the deaths that much more a loss.
While I don't want to give away all, because I recommend reading it, I am going to reference the end here. The MC is twelve at the beginning of the book, and sixteen when it finishes. The boy she finally reunites with is two years older. At the end, they are getting ready to cross the border into Switzerland, and have decided they will move to New York. Start life anew, look forward. I teared up. I did the math. They were two years older than my parents.
Until I was 13, we lived in a neighborhood where a lot of our parents or grandparents were immigrants, mostly Jewish. The characters' tales were the stories of people in our building. My mother, who escaped from Iraq, never shared stories that included fear. In fact, she didn't speak of it much at all. I assumed she was trying to be American, looking forward, not back. But most of the immigrants were European. These were parents of friends, women my mother played cards with, people we saw in the elevator. We knew something awful had happened in Europe and that Germany was responsible, but we never experienced that fear and horror.
There is no epilogue in the book, but I see it clearly. Me, my friends, the children playing tag, riding bikes, walking to school together, we were where the story goes. The people carrying the loss and awful memories play cards, sip coffee, go shopping, cook dinner, and hopefully, feel safe and free. Their children did. We were a happy epilogue.
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