New historical fiction: author recipe and menu, and book giveaway
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August 2020
PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU
Ellen Feldman
St. Martin's Press
8/4/2020
Historical Fiction
Paperback, 320 pages
Living through World War II working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Ellen Feldman's Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.

"Things are seldom as they seem in this engrossing tale of identity, survival, loyalty, and love. With frequent time shifts and dubious identities, the author adds considerable depth to her well-crafted gripping tale unfolding amid vivid depictions of Paris in wartime. Recommended with enthusiasm...”
-Library Journal (starred review)

“A nuanced WWII story of love and survival in Occupied Paris...With its appealing heroine and historically detailed settings...a dangerous secret gives Feldman’s story a gasp-worthy spin.”
-Publishers Weekly
Dear Reader,

I won’t say Paris Never Leaves You was the easiest to write of all the books I’ve published, but it was the most challenging and fulfilling. That had to do in part with a serendipitous discovery about Paris under the Occupation that I made while wandering the open stacks of the New York Society Library where I research and write. I won’t describe my finding—I don’t want to spoil the plot for you—but I will say it surprised several professional historian friends and raised some fascinating historical and moral issues.
 
The characters didn’t arrive fully formed. In this case, they grew and changed and became real to me as no characters have in my previous books. I hope they’ll captivate you, too, and that Paris Never Leaves You will bring a time, a world, and its personal and moral dilemmas alive for you as it did for me.
 
Warm regards,

Ellen Feldman
PARIS NEVER LEAVES YOU BOOK CLUB MENU AND RECIPE
Food plays a unique role in the novel, not only for its intrinsic appeal but as an expression of Vivi’s search for her identity and the conflict between Charlotte’s past in Paris and their current life in New York. At one point, Vivi muses about the culinary dichotomy of her two worlds. 

“At Aunt Hannah’s she had the kind of dinners she had at her friends’ houses.  A lamb chop or hamburger, green beans, and a baked potato.  She liked her mother’s cooking, but she knew her friends thought having an omelette for dinner was weird, and more than once when they’d come for supper she’d seen them trying to hide uneaten mushrooms on their plates.”
 
One day Charlotte comes home from work to find that Vivi has been baking with their neighbor, Hannah, and again the difference between Charlotte’s past in Paris and Vivi’s life in New York becomes evident. Brownies are Vivi’s favorite, Hannah tells Charlotte.
 “Since when?” Charlotte asked without thinking. The last she’d heard her daughter was partial to macarons and biscotti, but then she hadn’t made either in a while. By the time she got home from work, she had all she could do to get dinner on the table. Besides, what teenage palate isn’t more attuned to a gooey brownie than an austere biscotti?"
And then there’s the cassoulet, an elaborate multi-ingredient time-consuming dish, that Charlotte makes on weekends in order to have dinner to heat up during the week for her and Vivi. 

—Ellen Feldman
FOR YOUR BOOK CLUB:

French Omelette Recipe

Ellen Feldman's Website

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