Parents often passionately and truthfully declare that they would give their lives for their children. In WHILE PARIS SLEPT by Ruth Druart, during the German occupation of Paris, a woman on her way to a concentration camp gives her newborn infant to a stranger, hoping against hope that it will save her son’s life. Sometimes such decisions lead to unintended consequences.

This crucial act doesn’t occur until almost halfway through the book. First, we get to know the main characters, especially Jean-Luc and Charlotte, who left everything in their lives behind in an effort to save Samuel, the infant entrusted into Jean-Luc’s care. We learn about Charlotte’s pampered upbringing; even though her family was wealthy, they still struggled to find food because her mother would not shop at the black market. Charlotte worked at the local hospital, mopping floors and helping the patients. Jean-Luc lived with his mother; his father had been sent to Germany as forced labor for the Germans two years earlier. When Jean-Luc is assigned to work at an unused railroad yard, he hears rumors that it’s being used to transport Jews from the Drancy transit camp, which is just outside of Paris, to somewhere east of the city.

Everyone tells Jean-Luc to keep his head down, ask no questions and follow orders. He has another reason to stay unnoticed and unremarkable by the Germans: he was born with a deformed left hand, which hasn’t hampered him in his work but might cause him to be sent to a “work camp.” The Nazis don’t like people with deformities. Still, Jean-Luc sees what is happening, this forced removal of Jewish families, and in his heart he knows it’s wrong. But when he tries to do something to thwart the Nazis, it doesn’t go as planned, and he ends up in a hospital, where he meets Charlotte.

"The ending is extremely touching, and even the most cynical reader will shed a tear. It certainly brings the story full circle in a very satisfying manner."

Although they come from very different backgrounds, Jean-Luc and Charlotte appear to be caring people in a sea of ostriches --- the rest of the population of Paris all seem to have their heads in the sand: blind, oblivious, asleep, uncaring. And when, early one morning, there is an unexpected event that means the Jews who are on their way to a concentration camp must be unloaded from the cattle car they had been packed into, Jean-Luc runs into a desperate woman who thrusts her baby into his shirt and begs him to save her son.

The story is told in alternating time periods. In 1944, we travel with Jean-Luc, Charlotte and Samuel as they try to save the infant’s life by escaping from the Nazis. It’s not an easy task, and they literally risk their lives crossing the Pyrenees Mountains to save this precious baby. Nine years later, the trio is living in Santa Cruz, California. They have embraced the American culture, and Samuel knows nothing about France or the fact that his Jewish parents gave him up to save his life. So when Jean-Luc and Charlotte learn that Sarah and David Laffitte are alive and have been searching for their son since the end of the war, they are shocked.

The book causes us to carefully consider what it means to be a family and explores the subject of sacrifice, beginning with Sarah’s sacrifice of Samuel to Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc and Charlotte then sacrifice their lives in France, as French citizens, with their families in order to save Samuel's life. Druart also examines community and those communal relationships: neighbors, friends and acquaintances.

The book’s title has many meanings. The Nazis rounded up the Jews late at night, in secret, while Parisians slept, so no one saw their friends being taken away. But Paris also “slept” through the occupation metaphorically with its complicity in allowing the Jewish Parisians to be targeted and deported to their deaths. In Paris, where people live in apartments with many neighbors, no one knew who could or could not be trusted. In fact, we don’t really know if Charlotte’s mother kept secrets from her husband. The neighbor who helped them in an emergency just might report them to the authorities the next day.

This same indifference or callousness extended to others who, when their Jewish friends were rounded up at night and taken away, just turned their heads, drank their ersatz coffee and pretended nothing untoward was happening. If you don’t acknowledge something, maybe it doesn’t really exist. So, too, did Charlotte’s neighbors in Santa Cruz shun her when they thought something strange was happening to her and Jean-Luc.

But Druart juxtaposes those cruelties --- small and large --- with the random acts of kindness that we also read about. A guard in the concentration camp who inexplicably gives Sarah a canteen of water when she is desperate for hydration. A mountain guide who carries Samuel when Charlotte cannot. And, most importantly, the kindness of a railroad worker who risks his life to save an infant, and a mother who sacrifices everything for her child. And the baby? We come to realize that Samuel ended up saving the lives of both sets of parents as surely as they saved his.

The ending is extremely touching, and even the most cynical reader will shed a tear. It certainly brings the story full circle in a very satisfying manner. I can imagine that book clubs will enjoy discussing the intricacies and questions about love and family --- and what we would sacrifice in their name --- that the book raises.