Map of the Heart

by Susan Childress

First published 2017

Camille Palmer has built a quiet life as a photographer and single mother after losing her husband. When her aging father asks her to accompany him to France, the country where he grew up, she agrees to the trip along with her daughter Julie. She expects a simple family vacation. Instead, returning to Provence awakens buried memories in her father that pull their family into the shadows of World War II. The journey forces Camille to confront secrets about her family's wartime past that reshape everything she thought she knew about her heritage. As she uncovers the truth about what her relatives endured during the German occupation, Camille also meets an American historian researching the same period. Their connection reawakens feelings she believed had died with her husband. The trip to France becomes a reckoning with both family history and her own future.

Genres: romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama

Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking

Tropes: family-secrets, second-chance

Setting: France, Provence

Period: World War II

351 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow

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