The Book of Lost Names

The Book of Lost Names is a 2020 New York Times bestseller from author Kristin Harmel. The narrative, which alternates between France in World War II and modern-day America, is based on the true story of the document forgers who aided the secret underground French resistance in helping thousands of Jewish children escape to the safety of neutral Switzerland. Set against the backdrop of one of history’s most evil periods, The Book of Lost Names questions the morality of people during war, the power of love and relationships, and the protection of individual identity.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include instances and discussions of antisemitism, war, genocide, and the Holocaust.

Plot Summary

The novel opens in 2005 with 86-year-old Eva Traube Abrams, a widowed librarian who spots a picture in the newspaper of a German librarian attempting to reunite books stolen by the Nazis with their previous owners. She recognizes the book he is holding as one that belonged to her 60 years before and immediately books a flight to Berlin to reclaim it.

The story then flashes back to young Eva, a Jewish student at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1942. The sudden arrest of Eva’s father during a mass roundup by the Nazis leaves Eva as the head of the family. Her mother sinks into depression, yet Eva does not have time to grieve. Using her father’s connections, she brings her family to Aurignon, a small town in Free France. There, she meets Père Clément, a Catholic priest and liaison for the French resistance movement. Her artistic talents help her make a name for herself forging false documents for Jewish children to move them safely across the border to Switzerland.

Not long after she begins forging documents in the church library, Eva meets Rémy, a fellow forger whose charm and confidence immediately intrigue her. Rémy escorts Eva back to Paris to seek news of her father, only to find out that he has been taken to Auschwitz—a probable death sentence. The news sends her mother into a spiraling depression, but Eva is resolved to help as many people escape these atrocities as she can. At the same time, she does not want the true identities of the Jewish children to be lost along with everything else in their lives. She uses an old Catholic theology book, Epitres et Evangiles, and a secret coding system developed by Rémy to keep track of all the true names of the children. They nickname it the Book of Lost Names, hoping that one day it can be used to find the truth.

As the Germans become suspicious of potential forgery activities in the area, Eva and the rest of the workers must be protected. Gérard Faucon, one of the leaders of the resistance, asks to speak with her. When she meets him, she sees that Faucon is just an alias for Joseph Pelletier, one of her close friends from childhood. Their meeting coincides with Rémy’s departure, as he has been chosen to escort children across the border instead of simply forging documents. This hurts Eva, who has fallen in love with him. To take her mind off of his absence, Eva asks to meet some of the children for whom she creates the false papers, and Père Clément takes her to the safehouse. Her meeting with the children gives her the emotional connection she has been searching for and ignites a fire within Eva to do whatever she can to continue to help them. Rémy is replaced by a woman named Geneviéve, but Eva still keenly feels the loss of the man she loves. When Rémy is caught and arrested by the Nazis, Eva must accept that the truth about their network and location could be tortured out of him. Fortunately, her falsified documents provide a valid alibi for him, and he is released, only to return straight to the front.

One night, Eva sees Père Clément speaking to a German officer. Her initial fear and suspicion are quelled when she finds out the officer, Erich, is a spy for the resistance who has turned against Germany. Thanks to Erich, the children are allowed to escape, since he is the one who reveals German locations and movement to Père Clément. A few months later, Erich informs them that the Germans are planning a large raid in Aurignon. Eva is asked to escort a group of children and goes to meet them, only to find Rémy, who she hasn’t seen in months, escorting them as well. They get the children to safety and then make love in a safehouse near the border, but when Eva wakes in the morning, he is gone. Upon Eva’s return to a nearby church, she meets a resistance fighter from Aurignon who tells her that the entire network has been betrayed: Germans have seized all involved in the forgeries, and they are looking for Eva. Due to her familial association, Eva’s mother has been taken as well. In disguise, Eva rushes to the small prison to find her mother, only to be told that she has been executed already. Devastated, Eva goes looking for Joseph to ask him for assistance.

Instead of finding Joseph, Eva discovers Geneviève, dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach. She reveals that Joseph was the one who betrayed the resistance and shot her for not revealing Eva’s location. Eva, knowing that Joseph will be looking for her, returns to the church library and writes a secret note to Rémy in the Book of Lost Names, hoping he will find it one day. Joseph arrives and attempts to torture information out of her, but before he can shoot her, Erich appears and kills him. Erich then turns the gun on himself to provide a distraction for Eva to escape the approaching Nazi soldiers.

Over a year later, the war is over, and Eva returns to Paris. She waits for Rémy to return to her, but there is never any sign of him. When the concentration camp prisoners are freed by Allied troops, Eva is stunned to find her father among them. He advises her to return to Aurignon to find answers about Rémy. When she does, Père Clément reveals that Rémy died during the war. A devastated Eva asks to see the Book of Lost Names to see if he ever found her secret message and responded to her, but all the church’s books were stolen by the Nazis. Eva returns to Paris, where her father advises her to move on with her life. A few days later, she meets Louis Abrams. They marry, move to America, and have a son, Ben. Eva never shares the details of her past heroic deeds with her family.

The novel ends with 86-year-old Eva arriving at the library in Berlin where the Book of Lost Names is being held by Otto Kühn, the librarian. She opens it to find all the familiar codes of the Jewish children’s names, but there is no special message from Rémy, meaning that he never found hers: “Marry me. I love you.” As Eva explains how the coding system works to Otto, the library receptionist interrupts to inform them that an older man has appeared saying the book belongs to him. Angered, Eva storms outside to find Rémy, who faked his death during the war. They both waited but missed each other by just a few years. Finally, he answers the proposal she wrote in the Book with a “yes,” and they begin their life together with “all the chapters still unwritten” (377).