The Book of Lost Names

Semi-retired Florida librarian Eva Traube Abrams is stacking books one morning when she fixes her gaze on an image in an open magazine. She stops as she recognises the picture as The Book of Lost Names, a book she hasn't seen in 65 years.

The article that goes with it talks about how the Nazis looted libraries all throughout Europe during World War II—an event that Eva is quite familiar with—and how people are trying to find the writings that were stolen from them so long ago. Among the more interesting examples is the book in the picture, a religious treatise from the eighteenth century that is believed to have been seized from France in the latter stages of the war. It is now kept in Berlin's Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library and seems to contain some kind of code, but academics are unsure of its origins or its meaning. The solution lies only with Eva; but will she have the fortitude to relive the past and aid in the reunion of those who were lost in the conflict?

Eva had to leave Paris in 1942 when she was a PhD student because her father, a Polish Jew, had been arrested. She seeks safety in a little Free Zone mountain village and starts creating identification papers for Jewish kids escaping to Switzerland, which is neutral. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. When Rémy vanishes and the resistance cell they work for is betrayed, the documents they save in The Book of Lost Names will become even more important.

The Book of Lost Names is a compelling and moving book that will captivate readers and make them think of books like The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network. It also shows how strong courage and love can be while facing evil.