First published 2013
In January 1943, Paris shivers under German occupation as the Gestapo conducts its largest roundup of French resistance women. From detention camps across the city, 230 women board a single train bound for Auschwitz. The passengers range from a fifteen year old schoolgirl to a sixty eight year old farmer's wife. Teachers sit beside biochemists, housewives next to university lecturers, all united by their defiance of the Nazi regime. As the train rolls toward Poland, these women face the unknown horrors of the death camps. Their survival will depend not on luck or circumstance, but on something far more powerful. In the barracks and work details of Auschwitz, bonds form between strangers that transcend class, age, and background. The friendship that develops among this group becomes their lifeline, sustaining them through daily brutality and keeping hope alive in the darkest place on earth. For the forty nine who will eventually return to France, these connections forged in suffering will prove unbreakable.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, survival
Setting: France, Paris, Poland, Auschwitz
Period: 1943
404 pages · Paperback · Circe
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence