The Book of Lost Names

 

As I was reading Kristin Harmel’s latest historical fiction, The Book of Lost Names, I kept feeling like I’d read this book before. Which would be impossible since it was just published in July of this year. It’s based on a true story so there’s a definite possibility that other novels with similar story lines were based on similar true stories. Overall, the book was unique. I felt like a snippet here was like one novel, another snippet reminded me of another novel. None of that, however, kept me from finishing the book in just a few days. It was a very engaging story.

 Eva Abrams is an 80-something year old librarian in Florida when she spots a New York Times article about books confiscated by the Germans during World War II that are now being returned to their rightful owners. The book pictured with the article is a book that Eva claims as her own. During the war, after escaping from Paris to the Free Zone, Eva falls into a job as a forger of documents to help refugees escape to Switzerland. As she creates new identities for children, she finds a way to record the actual names of the children too young to remember who they really were need to be recorded somewhere so their true identities can be preserved.  She and her fellow forger, Remy, create a code within a religious tome. Hence, “the book of lost names.”

 I highly recommend The Book of Lost Names.