Hours before he died in Montreal in 1982, Jacobina’s father, Lica Grunberg confesses a deep secret to her that has haunted him for years. While Lica escaped the Nazis, his eldest daughter and first wife did not.

He was longing to return to his home in Romania and his wife, a Jewish Parisian, refused to leave Paris with their daughter Judith. Clearly the pull of his home country was stronger than staying with his family. This deeply affected Judith's mother and her actions as a mother.

In time, Lica Grunberg remarried and started another family and so begins Jacobina’s story. They managed to flee to safety when she was a young child.

In 2006, we encounter Béatrice, a Parisian who achieves her dream of working for the World Bank, living in Washington DC. However, all does not go smoothly. She has an horrendous bully of a boss, who one day implores her to include information in a press release that causes chaos and harm to the organisation, but then blames her for the press coverage and consequences, demotes her, ends her chances of a transfer to another department and threatens her tenure.

Feeling demoralised and miserable at work and with what one can only describe as in a lousy relationship with a man, obsessed with his job and daughter from his first marriage, she inadvertently decides to become a volunteer to help a local charity. Through this charity she meets a grumpy, sad much older woman in reduced circumstances, Jacobina. 

In time, they become firm friends as Béatrice helps her, in many ways, to make her life more comfortable. Intrigued by her friend’s story of the older half-sister after finding clues in a box of letters and memorabilia that Jacobina hasn’t looked at in years, she enthusiastically begins their journey to help fulfil her promise to her dying father, to find Judith. 

And what a journey!

While reading the two stories over two timelines, there are several twists, making it all the more intriguing. In the 1940s, Judith, an intelligent, diligent student at the Sorbonne, also works in the reading room of the university’s library. There she realises she has an admirer. He leaves notes for her and eventually summons the courage to reveal himself.

They fall madly in love and when things become unbearable for Jewish citizens in France, Christian from a wealthy family, is not only the love of her life, but is also an enormous help to her and her mother, but there is a difficult situation they must face. 

Meanwhile, back in 2006, Béatrice goes to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, seeking help to find Judith and meets a volunteer called Gregoire, a Frenchman who is a vineyard owner near Bordeaux, who turns her head. He helps her find clues in her quest to find Judith as they uncover this family secret going back over sixty years. 

There are several intriguing instances in both timelines, incorrect information given to Christian in the 1940s that creates sliding door moments, changing his and Judith’s lives forever.

In 2006, Gregoire has to return to Bordeaux on urgent business. Meanwhile, Beatrice is on a business trip to Paris and takes a side trip to find Gregoire, near Bordeaux, and together they solve this sixty year conundrum that you will have to read the book to find out how and many other parts of this story.

Recommended Reading.

Once I began reading ‘A Jewish Girl in Paris’, I could not put it down reading it in a record five days. 

This is independent review, I am not paid by the publishers, so.If you Liked this review, Buy me a coffee



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