There are two aspects of this book which led me to write about it. The first is that it is a good story about the effect of the Holocaust on children across Europe. The book opens with a Jewish family being rounded up and sent to their death while the neighborhood watches, and the concierge in their building gloats. There are many more who stood by than resisted in France during the occupation, and this book gives an account that is consistent with other sources.
The second aspect that I like about this is the effect that a childhood trauma has on Sarah. She has a largely untraumatic war existence--she experiences the conditions in the detention camps, she then leaves her parents, and she sees her friend taken away--she is not sheltered in that way. But she is very lucky, much like the boy in 'Fugitive Pieces'. She is rescued and hidden, she makes it without having to give up much in the way of her innocence, at least not compared to other Holocaust survivors. But she carries a special guilt, which she never shares with anyone and which transforms her. I would like to have seen more of that in this story (rather than the neatly tied up package of a plot that links the present day seeker to the past in tangible ways) but this is a good story.
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