Again, she is asked to stop looking into this by her husband and his father, Edouard. Mamé and her family, like other families, took the apartments once the Jewish families were deported. She learns about the deportation of the Jews by the French police, and she discovers that a family of French Jews once occupied her own apartment on the Rue de Saintonge. Julia, in 2002, follows the story of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, much to the chagrin of her husband and others. She escapes finally to an elderly couple’s home in Orleans. Along with another little girl, Sarah convinces a policeman, whom she knows from before the war, to let them out. She fears that she’ll never be able to get back to her apartment to let her brother out. Eventually, her father and mother are taken to Auschwitz, while Sarah is left behind. Meanwhile, in 1942, Sarah and her mother and father are taken to the holding stadium known as Vel’ d’Hiv’. Julia is warned off of the story by many people, however, including her own family, because the French are ashamed about being involved in such an atrocity. Julia works on a story for an American newspaper about the centennial of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup of Jews in Paris. The plan is to move in with her husband, Bertrand, who stays mostly absent from the lives of Julia and her daughter, Zoë. Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.Meanwhile, in 2002, Julia, an American living in Paris, renovates an apartment owned by her husband’s grandmother, Mamé.
As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
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