The Paris Daughter

by Kristin Harmel

If you give a person a book, you give him the world. And children deserve the world, don’t you think?”

I’ve always believed that books are simply dreams on paper, taking us where we most need to go.”

She felt guilty saying the words aloud, for her children were a great blessing, and she knew she’d found her place in the world, but in becoming a mother, she’d lost so much of herself, too.

“I think that love is always difficult, because it requires us to lose a bit of ourselves to gain so much more,” Juliette said at last. “But I believe that whatever we give up is worth it in the end, if we give those pieces to someone who loves us back just as fiercely.”

“The losses never leave us, Juliette,” Ruth said. “They make us who we are.”

“Such things can happen anywhere as long as good people look away. It is what happened in Germany. By the time anyone thought to stand up on any large scale, it was too late.”

“The universe always leads you to exactly where you’re meant to be, for though it may be endless, there is a place in it for each and every one of us.”

Being a parent is not about doing what is right for ourselves, is it? Ruth Levy had said the previous summer, before sending her children away. It’s about sacrificing all we can, big and small, to give our children their best chance at life.

“Even if life transforms us, we are all who we are at our core, our whole lives through.”