Tuesday, February 4, 2025

BLOG TOUR - Last Twilight in Paris


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"A fast-paced and vibrant wartime tale of holding on to love against the odds and learning to fight for the truth." –Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Daughter

A Parisian department store, a mysterious necklace and a woman’s quest to unlock a decade-old mystery are at the center of this riveting novel of love and survival, from New York Times bestselling author Pam Jenoff

London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.

Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan—a once-glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.

Louise races to find the connection between the necklace, the department store and Franny’s death. But nothing is as it seems, and there are forces determined to keep the truth buried forever. Inspired by the true story of Lévitan, Last Twilight in Paris is both a gripping mystery and an unforgettable story about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love to transcend in even the darkest hours.

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Title:  Last Twilight in Paris
Author Pam Jenoff
Publisher:  Park Row
Genre:   Historical Fiction
Format:  Kindle ARC
No. of Pages:   336
Date of Publication:   February 4, 2025
My Rating:   5 Stars

MY THOUGHTS:


Inside Lévitan, The Nazi Department Store Where Jewish Prisoners Were Forced To Sell Their Belongings


Under the Nazi occupation of France, the Jewish-owned Parisian furniture store Lévitan was converted into a work camp where some 800 Jewish prisoners were held.


I decided to begin my review with the link and headline I discovered while searching for information about Lévitan. Having read numerous historical fiction novels set during World War II, which frequently delved into the atrocities committed in the various camps and even explored the sinister purposes of some, Lévitan was a name I had never come across before.

In this heartwarming and utterly unforgettable tale, we encounter Louise, a selfless woman whose life took an unexpected turn in 1953. While rummaging through a box in London, she stumbled upon a necklace bearing the name of a Parisian department store. Intrigued, Louise couldn’t shake the feeling that she had seen this necklace before. As the narrative unfolds, we are transported back to the tumultuous era of World War II, where Louise served as a dedicated Red Cross worker. It is during this time that we witness the devastating loss of her dear friend, Franny, a renowned actress who dedicated her performances to entertaining the POWs.

Our other primary protagonist in this story is Helaine, a sheltered young Jewish woman, Prior to the outbreak of the war, she falls in love with a cellist named Gabriel. As he is not Jewish, this presents a problem with her parents, especially her father. Nonetheless, she marries him, and the two scrape by due to his music. However, as the war has started to invade other parts of Europe, including Paris, a gulf begins to grow between them.

Louise is relentless in her determination for trying to find out whatever she can about the necklace she found, despite any obstacles she may face. More importantly, Louise is more determined to find the truth about the department store called Lévitan and how it became a labor camp and what Jews were imprisoned there. 

As most stories about the war have a strong impact on me, this one did as well. In fact, I was brought to tears more than once in the story. I loved reading Pam Jenoff’s comments before and after the story that illustrate her reasons for writing these impactful World War II stories, And, although using literary license when necessary, she clearly brings attention to yet another cruel way in which the Germans treated the Jews. 

Quite often when reading these World War II stories, I am reading stories that took place in Germany, and we all know what happened there. However, to see how in Paris the Jews were treated no better, and how some of them were housed, was utterly heartbreaking. I’ve only had occasion to read two previous books by this knowledgeable author, but that is a situation I plan on changing in the coming year.

Many thanks to Park Row and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

Please enjoy the following excerpt:
Prologue

Helaine

Paris, 1943 

Darkness. 

Helaine stumbled forward, unable to see through the black void that surrounded her. She could feel the shoulders of the others jostling on either side. The smell of unwashed bodies rose, mingling with Helaine’s own. Her hand brushed against a rough wall, scraping her knuckles. Someone ahead tripped and yelped. 

Hours earlier, when Helaine had been brought from her underground cell at the police station into the adjacent holding area, she was surprised to see other women waiting. She had not encountered anyone since her arrest. She had studied the women, who looked to be from all walks of life, trying to discern some commonality among their varied ages and classes that had caused them to be here. There was only one: they were Jews. The yellow star they wore, whether soiled and crudely sewn onto a worn, secondhand dress or pressed crisply against the latest Parisian finery, was identical—and it made them all the same. 

They had stood in the bare holding area, not daring to speak. Helaine was certain that her arrest had been some sort of mis take. She had done nothing wrong. They had to free her. But even as she thought this, she knew that the old world of being a French citizen with rights was long gone. 

An hour passed, then two. There was nowhere to sit, and a few people dropped to the floor. An elderly woman dozed against the wall, mouth agape. But for the slight rise and fall of her chest, she might have been dead. Hunger gnawed at Helaine and she wished that she still had the baked goods she purchased at the market just before she was taken. The meager breads, which had seemed so pathetic days earlier, now would have been a feast. But her belongings had been confiscated at arrest. 

Helaine looked upward through the thin slit of window near the ceiling. They were still in Paris. The sour smell from the city street and the sounds of cars and footsteps despite the curfew were familiar, if not comforting. How long they would stay here, she did not know. Helaine was torn. She did not want to remain in this empty room forever. Yet she also dreaded leaving, for wherever they were going would surely be worse. 

Finally, the door had opened. “Sortir!” a voice ordered them out in native French, reminding Helaine that the policemen, who had brought them here and who were keeping them captive, were not Germans, but their own people. 

Helaine had filed into the dimly lit corridor with the others. They exited the police station and stepped outside onto the pavement. At the sight of the familiar buildings and the street leading away from the station, Helaine momentarily considered fleeing. She had no idea, though, where she would go. She imagined running to her childhood home, debated whether her estranged mother would take her in or turn her away. But the women were heavily guarded and there was no real possibility of escape. Instead, Helaine breathed the fresh air in great gulps, sensing that she might not be in the open again for quite some time. 

The women were herded up a ramp toward an awaiting truck. Helaine recoiled. They were being placed in the back part of the vehicle where goods should have been carried, not people. Helaine wanted to protest but did not dare. Smells of stale grain and rotting meat, the truck’s previous cargo, assaulted her nose, mixing with her own stench in the warm air. It had been three days since she had bathed or changed and her dress was wrinkled and filthy, her once-luminous black curls dull and matted against her head. 

When the women were all inside the truck, the back hatch shut with an ominous click. “Where are they taking us?” someone whispered. Silence. No one knew and they were all too afraid to venture a guess. They had heard the stories of the trains headed east to awful places from which no one ever returned. Helaine wondered how long the journey would be. 

As they bumped along the Paris streets, Helaine’s bones, already sore from sleeping on the hard prison cell floor, cried out in pain. Her mouth was dry and her stomach empty. She wanted water and a meal, a hot bath. She wanted home. 

If home was a place that even existed anymore. Helaine’s husband, Gabriel, was missing in Germany, his fate unknown. She had scarcely spoken with her parents since before the war. And Helaine herself had been taken without notice. Nobody knew that she had been arrested or had any idea where she had gone. It was as if she simply no longer existed. 

To distract herself, Helaine tried to picture the route they were taking outside the windowless truck, down the boulevards she had just days earlier walked freely, past the cafés and shops. The familiar locations should have been some small comfort. But this might well be the last time she ever came this way, Helaine realized, and the thought only worsened her despair. 

Several minutes later, the truck stopped with a screech. They were at a train station, Helaine guessed. The back hatch to the truck opened and the women peered out into pitch blackness. “Raus!” a voice commanded. That they were under the watch of Germans now seemed to confirm Helaine’s worst fears about where they were headed. “Schnell!” Someone let out a cry, a mix of the anguish and uncertainty they all felt. 

The women clambered from the truck and Helaine stumbled, banging her knee and yelping. “Quiet,” a woman’s voice beside her cautioned fearfully. A hand reached out and helped her down the ramp with an unexpectedly gentle touch. 

Outside the truck it was the tiniest bit lighter, and Helaine was just able to make out some sort of loading dock. The group moved forward into a large building. 

Now Helaine found herself in complete darkness once more. This was how she had come to be in an unfamiliar building, shuffling forward blindly with a group of women she did not know, uncertain of where they were going or the fate that might befall them. She could see nothing, only feel the fear and confusion in the air around her. They seemed to be in some sort of corridor, pressed even more closely together than they had been. Helaine put her hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of her, trying hard not to fall again. 

They were herded roughly through a doorway, into a room that was also unlit. No one moved or spoke. Helaine had heard rumors of mass executions, groups of people gassed or simply shot. The Germans might do that to them now. Her skin prickled. She thought of those she loved most, Gabriel and, despite everything that had happened, her parents. Helaine wanted their faces, not fear, to be her final thought.  Bright lights turned on suddenly, illuminating the space around them. “Mon Dieu!” someone behind her exclaimed softly. Helaine blinked her eyes, scarcely daring to believe what she saw. They were not in a camp or a prison at all. Instead, they were standing in the main showroom of what had once been one of the grandest department stores in Paris.

Excerpted from LAST TWILIGHT IN PARIS by Pam Jenoff. Copyright © 2025 by Pam Jenoff. Published by Park Row Books, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.  
 



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Pam Jenoff is the author of several books of historical fiction, including the NYT bestseller The Orphan's Tale. She holds a degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a degree in history from Cambridge, and she received her JD from UPenn. Her novels are inspired by her experiences working at the Pentagon and as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She lives with her husband and 3 children near Philadelphia, where she teaches law.


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