Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay - I was very excited about this book as it was the first book our new Faculty Book Club selected. It took me a while to get to read (listen) to it as every time I started someone else wanted a copy to read so I'd give mine away! In the end, I shorted myself a copy and had to download it and listen to it on my iPhone. Regardless, read or listened to, this book was a well-written work of historical fiction which taught me about an event that heretofore I had no knowledge about.
Sarah's Key is told from both the perspective of a 10-year-old girl whose family is rounded up during the Vel D'Hiv in France in 1942 and an American who presently lives in Paris and uncovers a hidden family secret which links them both. The Vel D'Hiv roundup was an event the French government has hidden quite successfully since World War II. During this roundup, the French police rounded up men, women, and children and took them to the Vel D'Hiv, a large velodrome. There, there were kept in deplorable conditions until being loaded up on trains and sent to German concentration camps where they were gassed. The book is told in alternating chapters, moving between 1942 and present day France, so that the reader becomes immersed in both the history of the event and the impact it has had on current day France.I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction in the least. Learning about historical events through a well-written book is always an enjoyable experience.
