Kristin Harmel
Author of The Book of Lost Names
About the Author
Works by Kristin Harmel
Associated Works
Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume (2007) — Contributor — 344 copies, 16 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1979-05-04
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Newton, Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- Orlando, Florida, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Newton, Massachusetts
Members
Reviews
What an incredibly sad and moving story. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time, one I know I’ll talk about often.
Here’s something I appreciate in books and movies: Sometimes, the endings aren’t always wrapped up nicely in a bow. Sometimes they don’t wrap the reader up in a cozy blanket. Sometimes, they feel more real. This is one of those stories.
My family’s history echoes some of the history in the book. Grandparents born in Poland, who lived in France. Taken to a show more labor camp in Germany with my mother, a baby at the time. Freed when the war ended. I don’t know much about that time because my mom was just a baby and my grandparents weren’t keen to talk about it. I understand why Grandma Edith found it hard to talk about too.
Sometimes the content was hard to read because it is a part of my family’s past and it’s scary, what happened during those times. Books have a way of making history bounce off the pages and become more real. “The Winemaker’s Wife” would make a great book to read alongside history curriculum in high school.
A well-researched book, the characters felt real and flawed and in-depth. I appreciate the author’s notes at the back of the book, which share titles of books for anyone interested in reading further on the history and topics threaded throughout “The Winemaker’s Wife.”
This is a very real, very engaging, very well-written and researched book. Be prepared to reflect on the past (yours and the world’s), but also to feel optimistic in a poignant, authentic way. show less
Here’s something I appreciate in books and movies: Sometimes, the endings aren’t always wrapped up nicely in a bow. Sometimes they don’t wrap the reader up in a cozy blanket. Sometimes, they feel more real. This is one of those stories.
My family’s history echoes some of the history in the book. Grandparents born in Poland, who lived in France. Taken to a show more labor camp in Germany with my mother, a baby at the time. Freed when the war ended. I don’t know much about that time because my mom was just a baby and my grandparents weren’t keen to talk about it. I understand why Grandma Edith found it hard to talk about too.
Sometimes the content was hard to read because it is a part of my family’s past and it’s scary, what happened during those times. Books have a way of making history bounce off the pages and become more real. “The Winemaker’s Wife” would make a great book to read alongside history curriculum in high school.
A well-researched book, the characters felt real and flawed and in-depth. I appreciate the author’s notes at the back of the book, which share titles of books for anyone interested in reading further on the history and topics threaded throughout “The Winemaker’s Wife.”
This is a very real, very engaging, very well-written and researched book. Be prepared to reflect on the past (yours and the world’s), but also to feel optimistic in a poignant, authentic way. show less
Opening in 2005, this historical novel looks back at the life of 85-year-old Eva Traube Abrams, now living in Florida. At her local library, Eva saw a New York Times report about a Berlin man named Otto Kuhn, who was trying to reunite owners with newly recovered books stolen by the Nazis. He was posing with a picture of one of the books - Epitres et Evangiles. Eva recognized it right away, because 60 years ago, it used to be hers.
The book had served as a repository for crucial information show more Eva encoded inside. She thought it had been lost forever. Now, she seized on the chance to retrieve what she thought was lost forever, and flew to Berlin that night.
The story then jumps back to Paris in July of 1942. Eva, a 23-year-old college student, was living in Paris with her parents, Jewish immigrants from Poland.
Germans had occupied Paris since 1940. (The French government moved to Vichy, France where it tried to operate in exile. Vichy, France was officially independent, but in deference to the Nazis, it adopted a policy of collaboration.) In July, 1942, over 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Paris by the French police acting on orders of the Nazis. They were sent to concentration camps. [For those familiar with Holocaust history, this was the famous “Vélodrome d'Hiver roundup,” the largest French deportation of Jews during the Holocaust, which primarily targeted foreign and immigrant Jews.]
Eva’s father was one of those picked up. (She and her mother were serendipitously staying at a neighbors that night.)
Eva and her mother managed to escape to Aurignon, a small town in Vichy, France. Madame Barbier, the woman who rented them a room in Aurignon, could see that the documents Eva and her mother had were forgeries, albeit good ones. Fortunately, she was part of a local resistance group led by Père Clement, a young Catholic priest. Madame Barbier alerted the priest that Eva could be useful to them with a little training, and he in turn asked for Eva's help.
Most of the rest of the book details Eva’s work creating fake documents for the resistance in Aurignon. She worked alongside Rémy Duchamp, a brave member of the French Resistance, who helped Eva perfect the craft. Harmel based this part of the novel on the real-life story of people in the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, whose residents helped thousands of Jews and other hunted refugees elude the Nazis. They not only hid them in and around the village, but helped make authentic-looking identification documents for them to escape across the border to neutral Switzerland, and sometimes even escorted them to safety themselves.
The character of Père Clement was no doubt inspired by Protestant Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon, and the activities of Eva and her fellow-forger Remy Duchamp and later Genevieve, echoed those of actual resistance members, in particular Adolfo Kaminsky and Oscar Rosowsky, both forgers who helped rescue thousands of Jews.
[Kaminsky joined the French Resistance at age 17. The remarkable story of his life is told in a book by his daughter Sarah Kaminsky, A Forger’s Life. The book's episode of Eva frantically producing children's documents overnight was inspired by a Kaminsky anecdote. He recalled that some 300 children needed papers immediately. Thus, 900 documents had to be created. Kaminsky remembered: “The math was simple. In one hour, I make 30 fake documents. If I slept for one hour, 30 people would die.” Kaminsky persevered. The papers were forged and the children avoided deportation.
Oscar Rosowsky worked in Le Chambon, setting up a forgery workshop, and came up with some of the methods Eva and Remy used in the book to copy official seals and duplicate them. His story is told by Peter Grose in The Greatest Escape: How One French Community Saved Thousands of Lives from the Nazis.]
Eva wanted to preserve the real names of the children for whom she made fake documents, and Remy taught her how to encrypt them inside an obscure religious book, Epitres et Evangiles. But after the Nazis came and raided the church, the book was thought to be lost, until its discovery in Berlin 60 years later.
Discussion: There are outstanding, inspirational stories from the dark time of the Holocaust, and the author’s incorporation of some of them into this book is admirable. But her retelling pales against the real life stories for several reasons. Most importantly, it is difficult to like the main character, Eva. She is incredibly naive and ill-informed for 23, and too focused on herself to see what is going on around her, such as: Nazi takeover of Paris. Her mother is even worse. She embodies the worst stereotypes of Jewish mothers, obsessed above all else that Eva should find “a nice Jewish boy” to marry, and then turns absolutely evil after their forced exile. In an absurd turn, she blames Eva for all of it: the Nazi’s taking her husband, their having to leave, giving up their apartment, and their new situation in Aurignon. (Mother: “You let them take him! You knew they were coming and you just stood there and did nothing.”) Then, when Eva starts to work for the resistance movement, the mother blames her for deserting the Jewish faith by working with a priest (who is, needless to say, working to save Jews). She resents the time Eva spends helping: “You are in your own world, Eva, and there’s no room for me in it.” (It is unclear what that would involve besides sitting with her mother in the boarding house all day, bemoaning their fate.). Even more absurdly, Eva actually accepted her mother’s characterization of everything, blaming herself as well! What kind of warped narcissism allowed her to agree with her mother that, for example, it was she, not the Nazis, who caused everything that happened? Further, as her love for (non-Jewish) Remy developed, she obsessed that it was a “betrayal” of her parents. Silly, egotistical, immature: thank goodness she had a talent that could be used to save desperate people, or she would be totally unsympathetic.
Evaluation: Many people today are not aware of all of the non-military efforts made by ordinary citizens in Europe to oppose the genocidal agenda of the Nazis and to resist them in any way, no matter small. These efforts included documenting Nazi war crimes and keeping those documents hidden to use later for evidence; hiding people in their homes at great personal risk; and forging papers for those who could find a safe country which would take them (the latter not always easy). Therefore I appreciated the attention the book gave to some of these acts of defiance, but I think readers could find more satisfying stories about the brave civilian resistance movements in Europe than this one. They range from non-fiction memoirs, like The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground by Justus Rosenberg to well-crafted fiction, like A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. show less
The book had served as a repository for crucial information show more Eva encoded inside. She thought it had been lost forever. Now, she seized on the chance to retrieve what she thought was lost forever, and flew to Berlin that night.
The story then jumps back to Paris in July of 1942. Eva, a 23-year-old college student, was living in Paris with her parents, Jewish immigrants from Poland.
Germans had occupied Paris since 1940. (The French government moved to Vichy, France where it tried to operate in exile. Vichy, France was officially independent, but in deference to the Nazis, it adopted a policy of collaboration.) In July, 1942, over 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Paris by the French police acting on orders of the Nazis. They were sent to concentration camps. [For those familiar with Holocaust history, this was the famous “Vélodrome d'Hiver roundup,” the largest French deportation of Jews during the Holocaust, which primarily targeted foreign and immigrant Jews.]
Eva’s father was one of those picked up. (She and her mother were serendipitously staying at a neighbors that night.)
Eva and her mother managed to escape to Aurignon, a small town in Vichy, France. Madame Barbier, the woman who rented them a room in Aurignon, could see that the documents Eva and her mother had were forgeries, albeit good ones. Fortunately, she was part of a local resistance group led by Père Clement, a young Catholic priest. Madame Barbier alerted the priest that Eva could be useful to them with a little training, and he in turn asked for Eva's help.
Most of the rest of the book details Eva’s work creating fake documents for the resistance in Aurignon. She worked alongside Rémy Duchamp, a brave member of the French Resistance, who helped Eva perfect the craft. Harmel based this part of the novel on the real-life story of people in the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, whose residents helped thousands of Jews and other hunted refugees elude the Nazis. They not only hid them in and around the village, but helped make authentic-looking identification documents for them to escape across the border to neutral Switzerland, and sometimes even escorted them to safety themselves.
The character of Père Clement was no doubt inspired by Protestant Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon, and the activities of Eva and her fellow-forger Remy Duchamp and later Genevieve, echoed those of actual resistance members, in particular Adolfo Kaminsky and Oscar Rosowsky, both forgers who helped rescue thousands of Jews.
[Kaminsky joined the French Resistance at age 17. The remarkable story of his life is told in a book by his daughter Sarah Kaminsky, A Forger’s Life. The book's episode of Eva frantically producing children's documents overnight was inspired by a Kaminsky anecdote. He recalled that some 300 children needed papers immediately. Thus, 900 documents had to be created. Kaminsky remembered: “The math was simple. In one hour, I make 30 fake documents. If I slept for one hour, 30 people would die.” Kaminsky persevered. The papers were forged and the children avoided deportation.
Oscar Rosowsky worked in Le Chambon, setting up a forgery workshop, and came up with some of the methods Eva and Remy used in the book to copy official seals and duplicate them. His story is told by Peter Grose in The Greatest Escape: How One French Community Saved Thousands of Lives from the Nazis.]
Eva wanted to preserve the real names of the children for whom she made fake documents, and Remy taught her how to encrypt them inside an obscure religious book, Epitres et Evangiles. But after the Nazis came and raided the church, the book was thought to be lost, until its discovery in Berlin 60 years later.
Discussion: There are outstanding, inspirational stories from the dark time of the Holocaust, and the author’s incorporation of some of them into this book is admirable. But her retelling pales against the real life stories for several reasons. Most importantly, it is difficult to like the main character, Eva. She is incredibly naive and ill-informed for 23, and too focused on herself to see what is going on around her, such as: Nazi takeover of Paris. Her mother is even worse. She embodies the worst stereotypes of Jewish mothers, obsessed above all else that Eva should find “a nice Jewish boy” to marry, and then turns absolutely evil after their forced exile. In an absurd turn, she blames Eva for all of it: the Nazi’s taking her husband, their having to leave, giving up their apartment, and their new situation in Aurignon. (Mother: “You let them take him! You knew they were coming and you just stood there and did nothing.”) Then, when Eva starts to work for the resistance movement, the mother blames her for deserting the Jewish faith by working with a priest (who is, needless to say, working to save Jews). She resents the time Eva spends helping: “You are in your own world, Eva, and there’s no room for me in it.” (It is unclear what that would involve besides sitting with her mother in the boarding house all day, bemoaning their fate.). Even more absurdly, Eva actually accepted her mother’s characterization of everything, blaming herself as well! What kind of warped narcissism allowed her to agree with her mother that, for example, it was she, not the Nazis, who caused everything that happened? Further, as her love for (non-Jewish) Remy developed, she obsessed that it was a “betrayal” of her parents. Silly, egotistical, immature: thank goodness she had a talent that could be used to save desperate people, or she would be totally unsympathetic.
Evaluation: Many people today are not aware of all of the non-military efforts made by ordinary citizens in Europe to oppose the genocidal agenda of the Nazis and to resist them in any way, no matter small. These efforts included documenting Nazi war crimes and keeping those documents hidden to use later for evidence; hiding people in their homes at great personal risk; and forging papers for those who could find a safe country which would take them (the latter not always easy). Therefore I appreciated the attention the book gave to some of these acts of defiance, but I think readers could find more satisfying stories about the brave civilian resistance movements in Europe than this one. They range from non-fiction memoirs, like The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground by Justus Rosenberg to well-crafted fiction, like A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. show less
So good that I read this in a marathon type of continuity. Eva Traube, a Jew, fled France with her mother when the Nazi's came after her family. Luckily, they were in another apartment, her father was not as fortunate and was taken away.
She and her mother found refuge in a beautiful mountain village in the Free Zone near Switzerland. Soon, she feels obligated to help those who are less fortunate and could not escape. She learns to be incredibly good at forging and creating identity documents show more that will be passed along to those in need.
Many of those she and her friend Remy are helping are children whose parents were taken. Remy decides to do more than documentation, he actually joins a resistance group that gathers hidden children and takes them on a treacherous mission to escape before more are lost in the flames of the ever successful Nazi regime.
Knowing she is helping to save children, she creates a book with a code that documents the original name of the child who tried to successfully escape the clutches of horror. The children were given new names on the forged documents. But, Eva believes that some day the world will come to their senses and Hitler will be vanquished. And, history will save the documented book containing the real names of those who fled.
The book is kept in a hidden library attached to a church that is a large part of the resistance movement.
Believing her lover Remi was captured and killed, she marries and moves to the United States. Years later, as a librarian, she sees a photograph of her Book of Lost Names. A generous man is trying to find the owners of books taken during the Nazi regime and return them. In order to obtain the book, she must return to a country containing many memories, pulling her back to a life she thought she left behind.
Excellent writing! show less
She and her mother found refuge in a beautiful mountain village in the Free Zone near Switzerland. Soon, she feels obligated to help those who are less fortunate and could not escape. She learns to be incredibly good at forging and creating identity documents show more that will be passed along to those in need.
Many of those she and her friend Remy are helping are children whose parents were taken. Remy decides to do more than documentation, he actually joins a resistance group that gathers hidden children and takes them on a treacherous mission to escape before more are lost in the flames of the ever successful Nazi regime.
Knowing she is helping to save children, she creates a book with a code that documents the original name of the child who tried to successfully escape the clutches of horror. The children were given new names on the forged documents. But, Eva believes that some day the world will come to their senses and Hitler will be vanquished. And, history will save the documented book containing the real names of those who fled.
The book is kept in a hidden library attached to a church that is a large part of the resistance movement.
Believing her lover Remi was captured and killed, she marries and moves to the United States. Years later, as a librarian, she sees a photograph of her Book of Lost Names. A generous man is trying to find the owners of books taken during the Nazi regime and return them. In order to obtain the book, she must return to a country containing many memories, pulling her back to a life she thought she left behind.
Excellent writing! show less
This is yet another spectacular and wonderfully crafted tale from Kristin Harmel, a magnificent storyteller and writer.
Colette, our plucky protagonist, in 1934 is brought into the "family business" by her mother, Annabel, a skilled jewel thief. They live by a long established code that they may only steal for the greater good from someone who is evil and undeserving and never for their own personal gain. By the time the Germans arrive in 1941, the thievery is done in support of the French show more Underground. A pair of magnificent bracelets are stolen from a dear Jewish compatriot. When Annabel sees the bracelets on the arm of a German officers paramour, she sets out to steal them back, to be returned to their rightful owner upon her friend's return to Paris. Annabel then stitches the bracelets into the hems of her daughters night dresses for safekeeping. One horrible evening, the Germans come to take Colette's family away but not before Colette's sister is pulled through the window and taken far afield. Later, the family is informed that Colette's sister was found drowned in the Seine and it appears that the bracelet had been removed from Colette's sister's nightdress' hem. Move forward sixty-plus years, Colette hears of the display of her sister's matching bracelet and is driven to know its story as it may finally give her answers regarding the demise of her sister. To live with such guilt, perhaps Colette had not really lived at all.
This was such a tender and emotion-filled story. The historical record richly provided the framework through which Ms. Harmel deftly wove her story. How much compassion would one normally have for a jewel thief? Yet, the reader has every bit of it for Colette. She's a strong, capable woman with a firm conscience which guides her. The writing itself is exquisite and enthralling. The mise en scène is beautifully crafted and highly atmospheric. A delightful added bonus was the setting of Colette's home in my own hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was as if the book was written just for me. If well-written heartfelt historical fiction appeals then this may well be a book written just for you as well.
I am grateful to Gallery Books for having provided a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Their generosity, however, has not influenced this review - the words of which are mine alone.
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: June 17, 2025
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-1982191733 show less
Colette, our plucky protagonist, in 1934 is brought into the "family business" by her mother, Annabel, a skilled jewel thief. They live by a long established code that they may only steal for the greater good from someone who is evil and undeserving and never for their own personal gain. By the time the Germans arrive in 1941, the thievery is done in support of the French show more Underground. A pair of magnificent bracelets are stolen from a dear Jewish compatriot. When Annabel sees the bracelets on the arm of a German officers paramour, she sets out to steal them back, to be returned to their rightful owner upon her friend's return to Paris. Annabel then stitches the bracelets into the hems of her daughters night dresses for safekeeping. One horrible evening, the Germans come to take Colette's family away but not before Colette's sister is pulled through the window and taken far afield. Later, the family is informed that Colette's sister was found drowned in the Seine and it appears that the bracelet had been removed from Colette's sister's nightdress' hem. Move forward sixty-plus years, Colette hears of the display of her sister's matching bracelet and is driven to know its story as it may finally give her answers regarding the demise of her sister. To live with such guilt, perhaps Colette had not really lived at all.
This was such a tender and emotion-filled story. The historical record richly provided the framework through which Ms. Harmel deftly wove her story. How much compassion would one normally have for a jewel thief? Yet, the reader has every bit of it for Colette. She's a strong, capable woman with a firm conscience which guides her. The writing itself is exquisite and enthralling. The mise en scène is beautifully crafted and highly atmospheric. A delightful added bonus was the setting of Colette's home in my own hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was as if the book was written just for me. If well-written heartfelt historical fiction appeals then this may well be a book written just for you as well.
I am grateful to Gallery Books for having provided a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Their generosity, however, has not influenced this review - the words of which are mine alone.
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: June 17, 2025
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-1982191733 show less
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