The Paris Daughter

Elise travels south to Vichy, France, stopping in the quiet village of Aurignon. In the Catholic church there, she meets the local priest, Pere Clement. When she proves willing to try and defend him physically from an angry parishioner, and confesses something about her circumstances to him, Pere Clement offers her a job working with children. She agrees and is sent to the home of Madame Roche who, along with her field-hand, Bernard, shelters Jewish children for the underground.

Lucie and Mathilde are now even closer and are practically like twins. Juliette now doubts Elise is still alive, although Paul still cautions Juliette that he believes Elise will return and that Juliette should be prepared to give up Mathilde to her. Juliette and Paul regularly have the children run through air raid drills to prepare them should more bombs be dropped on the city, and Juliette continues to visit Antoinette’s grave when she has the time. One day, there is a large horse race organized at the nearby racetracks, and although Juliette is concerned about the danger posed by a busy crowd full of German soldiers, she is persuaded to let the children go to see the horses. Just as they are about to leave, however, air raid sirens sound, and bombs begin dropping almost immediately afterwards. Paul and Juliette run to their children; Paul picks up the girls and carries them towards the cellar, and Juliette almost reaches the boys when a bomb hits the shop.

Elise spends the remainder of the war in Aurignon helping to look after the children who pass through Madame Noirot’s home. She organizes and teaches lessons, queues for food rations, and helps around the house. Four new children arrive at the house, and one who goes by the name of Therese declares it isn’t her real name and that she won’t let anyone erase her identity. Elise reassures her that her identity is deeper and more fundamental than just her name. Upon learning Elise is an artist, one of the locals gifts her a set of paints, which she uses to paint the walls and ceilings of her bedroom in a replica of the Bois de Boulogne mural back home. Bernard organizes for her to receive a delivery of wood and carving tools, which she uses to sculpt Mathilde.

Juliette wakes up injured and disorientated in the ruins of the bookshop. Digging through the rubble, she finds Claude and Alphonse dead. Paul too is dead, still clutching the bodies of Lucie and Mathilde. One of the two girls is alive, and Juliette takes her to be Lucie, which gives Juliette a reason to keep living. It is later revealed that in her confusion and grief Juliette misidentified the surviving child, who is actually Mathilde. Juliette and Mathilde, who is now going by the name of “Lucie,” spend months in the hospital where Juliette recovers from a serious head injury. The deceased Foulons are buried alongside Antoinette. Juliette begs a small amount of money from her distant aunt, which pays for her and Lucie to rent a small room in a farmhouse just outside Paris for the remainder of the war. Juliette comes to resent and hate France and hears Paul’s voice counseling her to begin her life again, and so after Liberation she and Lucie return to live with Juliette’s aunt in America.

Bernard transports Elise back to Paris after the city is liberated. Over the course of the war, they helped hundreds of children pass safely through their village, although Pere Clement was arrested and killed. Elise discovers that La Librairie des Rêves was destroyed; Elise can’t believe her daughter could die without her feeling the loss but learns only Juliette and “Lucie” survived the bombing. Elise collapses on Mathilde’s grave and is encouraged by an older man grieving his own child not to give in to despair.

Elise is ejected from the cemetery after two nights sleeping on Mathilde’s grave. When she is refused entry to her former apartment building, she seeks out Bouet, only to discover he moved to New York. Bouet’s associate, Vasseur, has custody of Elise’s keys and papers and lets her into her flat. All of Olivier and Elise’s artwork was stolen, and although she is told the Nazis were to blame, it later turns out that during the war Bouet stripped the flat of art to sell for his own profit. Vasseur lends Elise some money and food and says he’ll try to get her in touch with any of her surviving friends. He tells her Bouet’s gallery is doing well thanks to Olivier’s work and the now famous work of an artist named Anicette Rousselle who died during the war. In fact, Bouet attributed Elise’s stolen pieces to the fictional Rousselle in order to sell them in America.

Elise volunteers with an aid organization that helps returning refugees and pays frequent visits to the orphanage in Andresy hoping to find George and Suzanne Levy. When the two children turn up, she takes them into her home and promises to care for them until their mother returns. The more time passes with no word from Ruth, the less likely it is that she survived the war. George is certain he would feel it if their mother were dead, and Elise encourages them to hope. Privately, however, she has doubts that Ruth will return. When Elise’s borrowed money runs out, Vasseur agrees to send her wood and potentially buy her sculptures since they were apparently impressive enough to be stolen by the Nazis.

Elise finds herself unable to sculpt competently at first but refuses George and Suzanne’s offers that they get jobs to help support them. On Suzanne’s advice, Elise tries carving Mathilde, even though she knows she won’t be able to sell that one, and succeeds. From there, Elise manages to carve a flock of birds and then other sculptures that she is able to sell for a meager income. Every day, Elise and the children visit the refugee center for news of Ruth until finally she appears with a group of women recently discharged from an American army hospital. Ruth reunites with her children, and although she feels guilty for it, Elise can’t help but regret losing her position in George and Suzanne’s lives. However, upon learning Elise was caring for the Levy children and that she lost both her husband and her own daughter, Ruth declares Elise is a part of their family now.

Ruth passed most of the war hiding in a cellar but was eventually betrayed and captured, spending the last few months of the war in a Nazi concentration camp. She was determined to survive for her children’s sake but almost died of tuberculosis before the camp was liberated. She moves in with Elise and the children, and only after months of recovery and frequent nightmares is she able to talk of her experience with Elise. She describes the camp as hell on Earth and asks how anyone could do such terrible things. Ruth and Elise offer each other comfort and resolve to keep moving forward.

After two years living as a family together, Ruth tells Elise she and the children are planning to move to America. They invite Elise, but she is not yet ready to leave the only home Mathilde knew. She promises to visit eventually and vows to one day reunite with Juliette and “Lucie.”