Paris is the setting of Kristin Harmel’s THE PARIS DAUGHTER, where the threat of German occupation looms over everyone.

Two young women, Elise and Juliette, meet by chance in a park and become good friends. That they are pregnant and give birth to girls almost the same age cements the bond that they feel. There is also the fact that both are Americans who moved to France to be with their French husbands. Their daughters end up feeling almost like sisters as they often play together.

"The question about being a good mother and what we do in the name of love is one that will haunt you for days after you have finished this lovely and moving historical novel."

While Elise’s husband is a mercurial, well-known artist, Juliette has married a slightly older man who runs his family's bookstore. Juliette has two other children --- both boys --- but she also grieves for the daughter who died shortly after birth and whose grave she often visits. Elise has only her one daughter, Mathilde, and her husband grows increasingly political during the unrest before the occupation of France. He ends up incurring the wrath of the Nazis and suffers accordingly. But his idea of how to protect his wife and daughter results in Elise asking Juliette to care for Mathilde while she goes into hiding so the Nazis can't kill her. They believe she is involved in her husband's anti-German activities.

Over the ensuing pages, Harmel shows how both Elise and Juliette live through the harsh war years. We also see how they struggle to survive after the horrifying losses they endure during the war, each in different ways. The ending takes place in 1960, years after the war has concluded. Both women are still tormented by decisions they made decades earlier, and we witness what happens when they finally meet for the first time since Elise left her daughter in Juliette's care.

The twist is certainly not unexpected, but it is touching nonetheless. On the whole, THE PARIS DAUGHTER is about motherhood and sacrifice, and the lengths to which we will go in order to protect those we love. It is also about the aftermath of horrific loss, and how the sudden death of a loved one can shake our world and perhaps even crack the fragile membrane of our sanity. War destroys more than just our physical bodies; it rips apart families and often ruins the lives of those who survive.

The question about being a good mother and what we do in the name of love is one that will haunt you for days after you have finished this lovely and moving historical novel.