More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The female sex has always been troublesome for those in power, because we see things, know things.
“What reason could they have to come for me, Maman?” Her eyes glitter, fever mixed with fear. “Don’t you see? They don’t need a reason! But they’ll find one. People always find a way to justify their hate—and give others an excuse to fall in line. They put words in people’s mouths, plant them like viruses, then watch them spread.
I understand that part, not wanting the world to see your sadness. You think you’re the only one, singled out by fate to suffer. You’re not, of course, but it feels that way. The rest of the world is moving forward, living their lives and dreaming their dreams, while you’re frozen, forever suspended in that terrible moment when your world stopped turning and the ground suddenly fell away. You exist in a void, where everything’s empty and endlessly dark, until little by little the light becomes unbearable.
But the years have transformed her into someone else—into an unhappy echo of the very mother who had forced her to deny her heart. It seems a terrible irony as I sit listening to her story, and I wonder if she realizes it, too, and if that’s why she’s decided to tell me her story.
There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been—but because you do. You realize too late that it was there for the taking—right there in your hands—and you let it slip away. Because you let something—or someone—keep you apart.
“I wanted to do my part. And I liked the AFS’s motto—that freedom and mercy shall not perish from this earth.”
To ensure a happy ending, a bride must be willing to give her whole heart to the man she marries. Her spine, however, must at all times remain her own. —Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch
A shiver runs through me, like a cold finger sliding down my spine. “The Gestapo knows where I live?” “They know everything, Soline.”
They tell us what can happen, and we say we understand. But somehow we’ve all managed to convince ourselves it won’t happen to us.
I refuse to let someone else’s rules cheat me of my bit of joy.
“How a person behaves toward us is never about us, Rory. It’s about them.
They were three women who’d been thrown together by a series of events none of them could explain, across seas and years and so many losses. Three separate strands woven to make one whole. Fragile alone but stronger now, because they were together.
