Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key is a complex book with two separate timelines that join in the middle. Sarah is a young Jewish girl living in Paris in the 1940's. One night, the French police knock on her door. She is told to pack some things and gather everyone in the family. She locks her brother in a secret cupboard thinking she will be able to retrieve him the next morning. Then her and her parents are taken the the Velodrome d'Hiver, along with thousands of other Jewish families. They are held hostage there, in unimaginable conditions, for three days (these characters are fictional, but this really happened in June, 1942). Next, they are taken to a work camp. She is immediately separated from her father, but a few days later, she is separated from her mother. She later escapes the camp and finds her way back to Paris, and discover her brother, dead, in the cupboard. For the rest of her life she lives with immense guilt, until twenty years later, when she commits suicide.
Julia, a middle aged writer, is assigned an article on the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup 60th Anniversary. Julia is an American from Boston who has lived in Paris for 25 years. Even though she is fluent in the language, married to a French man, and lived there for more than half her life, she never really felt accepted. But while researching for her article, she makes the discovery that a Jewish family was arrested from the apartment she is about to move into. This discovery changes her life. She becomes obsessed with discovering more about this family. She learns that after a certain point in time, the daughter of the family disappears from the camp records. This girl is Sarah. Julia learns of what happened to Sarah and the discovery of her brother in the apartment cupboard. This experience changes Julia's life forever.
I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. It is sad learning about what happens to these people and what they had to go through. The chapter in which Sarah is separated from her mother was the most upsetting scene of a book I have ever read. If you read this book, you will learn to take greater value in your life and family, because in Sarah's case, both were stolen from her.