![]() “Good morning, my darling girl.” I force a smile. She’s still beautiful, even in old age, even as she succumbs to the cancer we caught too late. She should still be sleeping, but I find her in bed with her eyes open, her head tilted toward the door. I finish my tea and head back into the house to check on her. But when it comes to the love of my life, I’m powerless against the tide. Men aren’t supposed to cry, especially men of my generation. It’s embarrassing how emotional I’ve grown lately. I sip my tea and blink a few times to clear my vision. Then again, perhaps I’d known on some level that He was there all along, because what other explanation could there have been for my wife and me finding each other in the midst of such chaos all those years ago?Īs I gaze out at the rolling fields, I can see our lives unfolding here, our daughter twirling in the sunlight, our grandchildren chasing each other through the blooms. When our grandchildren gave us great-grandchildren, and my wife and I were still here, I had no choice but to acknowledge a higher power. ![]() And when she had three healthy children of her own, I believed a little more. It began with our daughter, Nadia, for there’s no denying that she was a miracle. But in the years since, I’ve surprised myself by slowly wending my way back to faith. I’ve been talking to God a lot lately, which is strange because during the war I might have argued that He didn’t exist. “Thank you,” I say, looking upward to where I imagine God must be. My wife will almost certainly be gone by then, but at least she’ll have this, one last dawn to the poppy season. In the coming weeks, the fields will turn brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. I stare into the misty morning, and my breath catches in my throat when I see it: the first bloom of the season. It’s March, so the air is crisp, as crisp as it gets here in Antelope Valley, some sixty miles north of Los Angeles. I shuffle into the kitchen, boil water in our electric kettle, steep some Earl Grey tea, and make my way to the front porch. When she awakens, the pain will return, so while I yearn for her company, I’m grateful that for now, she’s at peace. I rise quietly, careful not to disturb her. But I’m as powerless to protect her in this moment as I was all those years ago in Paris, though both then and now I tried to fool myself into believing I had some control. I can’t imagine my world without her, for my life didn’t really begin until the day we met. The last half century has been a gift we never expected, perhaps a gift we never deserved. I know it’s greedy to want just one more week, one more month, one more year with her when we were already given so much time. We were lucky to survive the war, my wife and I, and not a day passes that I don’t think of those we lost. There’s never enough time, not when a person has become a part of you. The sand in the hourglass is running out, flowing relentlessly toward the end. She sleeps beside me, her narrow chest rising and falling, and already I miss her. “Set against all the danger and drama of WWII Paris, this heartfelt novel will keep you turning the pages until the very last word” (Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author). Ruby and Charlotte become a little family, but as the German net grows tighter around Paris, and the Americans debate entering the combat, the danger increases. But her skills are ultimately put to the test when she begins concealing her twelve-year-old Jewish neighbor, Charlotte, whose family was rounded up by the Gestapo. She becomes involved in hiding Allied soldiers-including a charming RAF pilot-who have landed in enemy territory. When Marcel is killed, Ruby discovers the secret he’d been hiding-he was a member of the French resistance-and now she is determined to take his place. Unfortunately, her marriage soon grows cold and bitter, her husband Marcel, distant and secretive-all while the Germans flood into Paris, their sinister swastika flags waving in the breeze. ![]() But it’s 1938, and war is looming on the horizon. When Ruby first marries the dashing Frenchman she meets in a coffee shop, she pictures a life strolling arm in arm along French boulevards, awash in the golden afternoon light. A moving and entrancing novel set in Paris during World War II about an American woman, a dashing pilot, and a young Jewish girl whose fates unexpectedly entwine-perfect for the fans of Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale and Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls, this is “ an emotional, heart-breaking, inspiring tribute to the strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love” (Mariah Stewart, New York Times bestselling author).
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