The book brings up a big debate that many European people have faced over the past seventy years. It really captures the terror and atrocity that these families went through. New and sad developments threw me for a loop. I became invested in these characters, and found myself constantly reading so that I could learn more about what would happen to Sarah, her brother, and Julia. It was like reading someone’s depressing family history, in a good way.
But the more I read the book became less mysterious and more emotional. So when I originally picked this book up I thought it fit the mold of most books I read: historical fiction and mystery. The more she learns, the more her personal life falls apart.
Julia becomes engrossed in nothing but learning all about Sarah and telling her about how her in-laws helped her. But as time goes by she realizes that is less and less likely unless she can break out of the camp and find her way back to Paris.
Sarah intent on protecting her brother locks him in a cupboard promising she will be back for him. While she investigates, Julia learns that her aloof French husband’s family is somehow connected with the second protagonist, Sarah, a young Jewish girl who is arrested in the Vel’ d’Hiv round-up. They were arrested and imprisoned in the stadium Velodrome D’Hiver (Vel’ d’Hiv’) in appalling conditions before being shipped to holding camps where the parents were separated from the kids all of whom eventually sent directly to Auschwitz.
Anyway she starts investigating and learns all about this dark time in French history where the Vichy government (the fascist regime in charge) instructs the French police to go door-to-door to round up the Jewish families living in the Paris suburbs. I regrettable admit that I know nothing about it myself (and as a modern history major in college focusing on the post WWII era that is surprising). She is given as an assignment the commemoration of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ on its sixtieth anniversary, something that she knew nothing about. Sarah’s Key is the story of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris.
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