**In Nazi-occupied Paris, a talented artisan must fight for her life by
designing for her enemies. From New York Times bestselling author
Juliet Blackwell comes an extraordinary story about holding on to hope
when all seems lost.
**
Capucine Benoit works alongside her father to produce fans of rare
feathers, beads, and intricate pleating for the haute couture fashion
houses. But after the Germans invade Paris in June 1940, Capucine and
her father must focus on mere survival--until they are betrayed to the
secret police and arrested for his political beliefs. When Capucine
saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz by highlighting her
connections to Parisian design houses, she is sent to a little-known
prison camp located in the heart of Paris, within the Lévitan department
store.
There, hundreds of prisoners work to sort through, repair, and put on
display the massive quantities of art, furniture, and household goods
looted from Jewish homes and businesses. Forced to wait on German
officials and their wives and mistresses, Capucine struggles to hold her
tongue in order to survive, remembering happier days spent in the art
salons, ateliers, and jazz clubs of Montmartre in the 1920s.
Capucine's estranged daughter, Mathilde, remains in the care of her
conservative paternal grandparents, who are prospering under the Nazi
occupation. But after her mother is arrested and then a childhood friend
goes missing, the usually obedient Mathilde finds herself drawn into the
shadowy world of Paris's Résistance fighters. As her mind opens to new
ways of looking at the world, Mathilde also begins to see her
unconventional mother in a different light.
When an old acquaintance arrives to go "shopping" at the Lévitan
department store on the arm of a Nazi officer and secretly offers to
help Capucine get in touch with Mathilde, this seeming act of kindness
could have dangerous consequences.
