The three main characters are all too human in their weaknesses and strengths, their loyalty, compassion and fears, their oscillating emotions. Barbie’s dungeon is the place where irises, France’s national flower, never grow. With the arrival of the sadistic Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’ the net begins to close in on both Jews and members of the resistance. The Legrands risk their own lives to protect Agnès when she meets and falls in love with a member of the resistance and has a baby. They live in Lyon, in the area controlled by the Vichy government, where collaboration means the rounding up of Jews for extermination. Fortunately for Agnès, she is taken in by good friends of her mother’s, Victor and Charlotte Legrand. With her dissertation finished and accepted, Monica has time on her hands to explore the intriguing note and see where it leads.įrom that point on, the narrative switches to September 3 rd 1939, the day France declared war on Germany and the same day that the parents of a 17 year-old Jew, Agnès Eisenberg, are involved in a fatal accident. The two names are Madeline Leblanc and Madeline Eisenberg. Inside the spine, she finds a sliver of newsprint with what appears to be a swastika, two names and the date 1942 written in the margin. While researching her dissertation in 2017 Los Angeles, Monica Chastain purchases a rare, antique copy of Aesop’s Fables.
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