Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay is a gripping novel that switches between centuries. The book starts with a young girl in Nazi occupied France, waking in the middle of the night to police banging on her door. They yell, telling her to open the door. With her father in hiding, the girl wakes her mother. Her family is told to pack a few things, for they are to be "temporarily moved". Afraid, and thinking that they will soon return, the young girl locks her little brother in a small and hidden room. She has good intentions, wanting to save her brother. While she, her mother and father go to the Vel' d'Hiv', where thousands of Jewish families are held until deportation. The novel then switches to the live of an American named Julia, married to a man from France, living in France. It is 2002, and Julia is working for a magazine. She is assigned to write about the 60th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, a dark time in French history. At the same time, Julia, he husband and their daughter, Zoe, are renovating and moving into an old apartment, one that used to hold a secret room. As the story continues, more and more connections are made between the young girl in the Holocaust and Julia. This book is very well written, because the switching of time periods doesn't get at all confusing.