Last Twilight In Paris
By Pam Jenoff
On Sale: February 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780778307983
Park Row Hardcover
Price: $28.99
About the Book:
"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.
Excerpted from LAST
TWILIGHT IN PARIS by Pam Jenoff. Copyright © 2025 by Pam Jenoff. Published by
Park Row Books, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.
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.
Buy Links:
HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/last-twilight-in-paris-pam-jenoff?variant=42640819388450
Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9780778307983&tag=hcg-02-20
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/last-twilight-in-paris-pam-jenoff/1145679315?ean=9780778387794
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-department-of-stolen-heirlooms-original-pam-jenoff/21476022?ean=9780778307983
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.
Social Links:
Author Website: https://pamjenoff.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamjenoff/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/213562.Pam_Jenoff
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pam-Jenoff/1216746581800099
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/PamJenoff
No comments:
Post a Comment