"PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU"--from author ELLEN FELDMAN--alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing--an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost

Paris Never Leaves You

"Masterful. Magnificent. A passionate story of survival and a real page turner. This story will stay with me for a long time." ―Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey

Living through World War II working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life?

Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Ellen Feldman's Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.

The war is over, but the past is never past.

Reviews

 

"A memorable, thought-provoking moral conflict, and dialogue [that] crackles like a duel... Paris Never Leaves You succeeds as a meaty moral tale." ―Historical Novel Society

"Fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale may want to pick this up." ―Booklist

"Nothing is quite what it seems... Wartime Paris is described in vivid, sometimes harrowing, detail... [An] engrossing page-turner." ―Kirkus

"The best works of historical fiction have a way of illuminating the present, allowing readers to better understand themselves through well-defined characters reflected in the prism of time.... Feldman does this beautifully in a multi-layered, tender story that explores the emotionally charged, often parallel terrains of truth, deception, love and heartbreak." ―Shelf Awareness

"A nuanced WWII story of love and survival in Occupied Paris… With its appealing heroine and historically detailed settings… a dangerous secret gives Feldman’s story a gasp-worthy spin." ―Publisher's Weekly

"Things are seldom as they seem in this engrossing tale of identity, survival, loyalty, and love...Recommend with enthusiasm." ―Library Journal

"Ellen Feldman's writing is riveting in this beautiful novel that tells the bittersweet story of a young mother's strength and survival during WWII. From a tiny bookstore in Nazi-occupied Paris to a post-war New York publishing house, Feldman effortlessly captures the terror, immediacy, and inextinguishable human spirit." ―Noelle Salazar, author of The Flight Girls

"Completely compelling. I tore through it. This novel pivots on how we manage to survive surviving... Charlotte's visceral story will stay with me.” ―Naomi Wood, New York Times best-selling author of Mrs. Hemingway and The Hiding Game

"Feldman's powerful exploration of some of the most profound questions about love and loyalty resonates strongly today: What would you do to save your child? What is morality in wartime? How do we make peace with the past?" ―Christina Lynch, author of The Italian Party

"This is an exquisite novel – one that gives us what we’re hungry for: an intelligent, complex female character who challenges our ideas of right and wrong, morality and immorality. We’re reminded, too, of the dangers of drawing easy, swift conclusions. Feldman achieves all of this with wholly admirable precision and wit; she takes aim and does not miss." ―Elizabeth J. Church, author of The Atomic Weight of Love and All the Beautiful Girls

"A fluid, rich, and nuanced novel, expertly crafted, guaranteed to follow you around long after you’ve turned the last page. I gulped it down.” ―Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra, Vera, The Witches, and A Great Improvisation

"Feldman’s characters―in the Paris bookstore that harbors many secrets or the Manhattan publishing house with its marvelous cast of misfits―are both terrifying and utterly engaging. With more twists and turns than the back streets of Paris, the story is as propulsively readable as a spy novel, and as rich and psychologically rewarding as only the finest literature can be." ―Liza Gyllenhaal, author of Local Knowledge and Bleeding Heart

"...a vivid and precise portrait of that city under German occupation during the Second World War, but it is also an exploration of the courage and cowardice of those bitter years, as well as offering a slyly persuasive love story. The swift, engrossing narrative conceals, in the best way, the fact that Feldman is also giving us a wise and troubling lesson about the great moral crisis of the last century." ―Richard Snow, author of Iron Dawn

"A thrilling achievement...I was thoroughly drawn into a deep, rich, vivid world of engrossing characters and emotional and moral crises...a great piece of writing in every way.” ―Fred Allen, Leadership Editor, Forbes


Ellen Feldman

 

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published articles on the history of divorce, plastic surgery, Halloween, the Normandie, and many other topics, as well as numerous book reviews. She has also lectured extensively around the country and in Germany and England, and is a sought-after speaker to reading groups both in person and by telephone.
She grew up in northern New Jersey and attended Bryn Mawr College, from which she holds a B.A. and an M.A. in modern history. After further graduate studies in history at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house.

She lives in New York City and East Hampton, New York, with her husband and Cairn terrier named Lucy.

http://www.ellenfeldman.com/