Pam Jenoff's gripping 13th historical novel, Last Twilight in Paris, follows the wartime experiences of two women whose lives are connected by a necklace. In dual narratives that alternate between each woman's perspective, Jenoff (Code Name Sapphire) portrays the courage of Helaine, a French Jew who is imprisoned in an unusual forced-labor camp in Paris during World War II, and Louise, a British housewife whose work with the Red Cross during the war left her with invisible scars.
In 1943, in Nazi-occupied Paris, Helaine is arrested and sent to Lévitan, a department store turned labor camp where prisoners are forced to sort household items looted from Jewish homes. Ten years later, in 1953, Louise finds a necklace in a box bearing the name Lévitan. Certain she has seen the necklace before and that it holds a connection to her best friend's death during the war, Louise travels to Paris to search for answers and seize a chance to reconnect with her younger, bolder self.
Jenoff ratchets up the tension as her narratives progress, making it clear that someone is actively trying to prevent Louise from solving her mystery. Meanwhile, Helaine's situation worsens as the Allies approach Paris and the Nazis grow desperate to erase the evidence of their crimes. Through the lives of these two women, Jenoff explores sacrifice and resilience, complicated family dynamics, and the knife's edge between acts of collaboration and resistance. Last Twilight in Paris is a heartbreaking account of a little-known slice of World War II history and a moving testament to the tenacity of women in wartime. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams