Shadows of a Childhood: A Novel of War and Friendship

A "riveting" (Publishers Weekly) and "unforgettable" (Kirkus Reviews) novel of war and friendship. Praised by the New York Times as "unsettling and uncompromising," this winner of France's 1997 Grand Prix des Lectrices is a fictionalized account of one individual's -- and one country's -- coming to terms with World War II. Léa and Benedicte are five and seven when they are hidden together in a convent in Bordeaux in the 1940s. They become inseparable, sharing everything except the secrets of their parents' disappearances. After the war, Benedicte's world returns to normal while Léa, marked by childhood memories she cannot escape, undertakes a devastating search for the truth. Hailed as a "novel of understated grace and enormous power" by Library Journal, this is a book destined to take its place alongside The Diary of Anne Frank.