J
Janet Skeslien Charles
Paris Library
Synopsis
Paris, 1939. Odile Souchet is more at ease with the Dewey decimal system than with people. A clerkship at the American Library in Paris puts her among students, diplomats and writers who share her love of books. When German troops occupy the city, the library stays open. Odile and her fellow librarians deliver books to soldiers, then smuggle volumes to Jewish readers once the occupiers bar them from the shelves.
Her English friend Margaret begins seeing a German officer, and Odile tells her fiance Paul, a police officer, what she has seen. What follows costs her more than she bargained for. She leaves the library to volunteer at the American Hospital instead.
Forty years later, a widowed Odile Gustafson keeps to herself in the small town of Froid, Montana. A lonely seventh grader named Lily starts turning up at her door, and Odile teaches her French and, bit by bit, the parts of the war she left behind.
The novel draws on the real staff of the American Library in Paris, who kept the shelves open through the occupation and defied Nazi orders to keep serving Jewish readers. It reads as quiet, character-driven historical fiction that trades battle scenes for the daily choices of librarians, and its two timelines meet only once Lily has earned the rest of Odile's story.
Genres
Frequently asked questions
Is The Paris Library based on a true story?
The novel is inspired by the real history of the American Library in Paris and the librarians who worked there during the Nazi occupation of World War II. While the protagonists Odile and Lily are fictional, the author based the supporting cast of librarians on the actual individuals who defied the Bibliotheksschutz to deliver books to Jewish readers and Allied soldiers.
How did the author research this book?
The author gained intimate knowledge of the setting while working as the programs manager at the American Library in Paris. She utilized archives from the American Library Association to reconstruct the library's wartime operations and even incorporated the text of actual historical documents known as crow letters into the narrative.