Sarah's Key

Tatiana DeRosnay, “Sarah’s Key”, St. Martins Press, 2007, 293 Pages

This is an excellent historical fiction novel based on the true July 16th, 1942 French roundups and deportations in Paris, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Velodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz.

Sarah is a ten year old girl caught up in this brutal roundup, but not before she locks her four year old brother in a cupboard which she intends to come back and free him from when the misunderstanding is cleared up in a few hours, and she and her father and mother will be released. She keeps the key to the cupboard in her pocket: hence the books title.

This novel is written from the perspective of a novelist, Julia Jarmond, assigned to write an article commemorating the 60th anniversary of this day the French have either forgotten or blamed on the Nazis. I found the first 50 pages puzzling as it jumped back and forth from the present to the past in very short chapters—some only pages long. But I recommend you stay with it—I did not put the book down until I finished it. This book is much like; "Sophie’s Choice”—a book I could not bear to ever read again, but glad I read it once. Linda picked it up when I finished and also did not put it down until she finished it. A very compelling novel.