The Last Hours in Paris: A Novel

by Ruth Druart

Overview

From the author of While Paris Slept comes a story of great love, betrayal, and redemption, set in WWII and 1960s France and England.

"Words are power. They can bring you down, lift you up, make your heart soar, make you fall in love. Or make you hate."

Paris 1944. Elise Chevalier knows what it is to love . . . and to hate. Her fiancé, a young French soldier, was killed by the German army at the Maginot Line. Living amongst the enemy, Elise must keep her rage buried deep within.

Sebastian Kleinhaus no longer recognizes himself. Forced to join the Third Reich and wear a uniform he despises, he longs for a way out. For someone, anyone, to be his salvation.

Brittany 1963. Reaching for the suitcase under her mother’s bed, eighteen-year-old Josephine Chevalier uncovers a secret that shakes her to the core. Determined to find the truth, she travels to Paris where she learns the story of a forbidden love as a city fought for its freedom. Of the last stolen hours before the first light of liberation. And of a betrayal so deep that it would irrevocably change the course of two young lives life forever.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538735220
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ruth Druart grew up on the Isle of Wight, leaving to study psychology at Leicester University. She moved to Paris in 1993, where she enjoyed a career in teaching at Marymount International School of Paris before turning to writing full-time. She now runs a weekly writing group in a Parisian café.

Editorial Reviews

"A wonderful book—an involving, terrifying, heartbreaking story of the power of love and forgiveness."—Jill Mansell, Sunday Times bestselling author

"A wonderful, moving, sad, but ultimately uplifting book."—Lesley Pearse, Sunday Times bestselling author

"Engrossing . . . a tender, yet thrilling story of love and family secrets in a time of war, beautifully told."—Rachel Hore, Author of One Moonlit Night

"Ruth is an exceptional storyteller. She weaves brave female characters through fascinating storylines. Her level of detail brings the past back to life, shining a light in the darkness. Love, loss, bravery. She’s like my favorite history teacher ever! My new go to author. I recommend her to everyone."—Ericka Waller, Author of Dog Days

"These characters command sympathy . . . A vivid exposé of war and its dislocations."—Kirkus

"The four-year occupation of France by the Germans in WW2 must be one of the most intensively fictionalised episodes in history. It takes an inventive author to find a new perspective on this well-surveyed landscape. Ruth Druart is such an author . . . An engrossing and psychologically complex novel which helps to explain why the Occupation still so fascinates us."—Historical Novel Society

"[Ruth Druart] made me think and cry and rage and smile at mankind's capacity for both beautiful, selfless love and terrible, heartbreaking cruelty."
 —Natasha Lester, Author of The Paris Secret, Praise for While Paris Slept

"[Ruth Druart is] a brilliant and bold new novelist . . . [she] fills each page with thrilling suspense, uncommon emotional depth, and fascinating characters."—Imogen Kealey, Author of Liberation, Praise for While Paris Slept

"Good people coping with an impossible situation are at the heart of Druart’s [writing]."—Publishers Weekly, Praise for While Paris Slept

From the Publisher

2022-04-27
This World War II saga explores issues of parenthood, justice, and retribution.

Druart’s second novel unfolds in two timelines, taking place in the 1940s and 1960s. At the book’s outset, in 1963, Élise has been living in apparent exile from her Paris roots, in a remote Breton village with a mysterious old woman named Soizic. Joséphine, Élise’s 18-year-old daughter, unearths her birth certificate and learns what her mother had postponed telling her: A man with a German surname is her father, not, as she had been told, her mother’s fiance who died fighting for France. Not understanding that her parentage was not only a source of disgrace, but of danger, Joséphine is angered by the deception and vows to track down her father. By 1944, Élise, her mother, and sister have endured four years of Nazi occupation. The way in which Paris has been devastated on so many fronts is viscerally evoked. Élise is part of a clandestine operation that arranges passage to Switzerland for Jewish children. At a bookshop, Élise meets Sébastian, a bilingual German soldier whose mother was French and who, with the glaring exception of his uniform, can pass as French. Sébastian finds the duties of his posting repugnant—acting as interpreter during Gestapo interrogation sessions and translating denunciation letters in which Parisians turn in their Jewish neighbors. Sébastian interferes when French police harass Élise in the bookshop, where he is an unwelcome customer. He takes escalating risks to win Élise’s trust and, ultimately, her love—rescuing her from the Gestapo and helping to save several children from deportation. Joséphine’s journey of discovery uncovers a tragedy of errors. Sébastian and Élise seem too innocent—unconvincingly so—to realize the depths of depravity into which both occupiers and occupied can sink. Their misplaced optimism will have disastrous consequences for each. But although Sébastian’s complexity will emerge only later, these characters command sympathy, to the point that readers will be exasperated by their missteps.

A vivid exposé of war and its dislocations.

Kirkus Reviews