About this Event
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz returns with a masterful new novel that captures the astonishing bravery of ordinary people in extraordinary times.
Paris, 1942: A city under strict military order, armed Gestapo are taking Jewish families from their homes with little resistance, sending them to concentration camps from which many will never return. When they arrest Ruth and her teenage son Léon, eleven-year-old Joséphine is mysteriously not on the Nazi’s list to detain. Josie’s mother orders she go to the only person she can trust: her piano teacher, Andrée Levallois. What Josie does not know is that Andrée and her parents are part of the French Resistance—bookshop owners, teachers, dancers, ordinary individuals all coming together to relay information back to the Allies with the aim to help liberate Paris from Germany.
Andrée and her parents take the child in as a member of their family, risking everything to keep her safe. But the stakes grow higher as their operations become more dangerous, and the family’s strength of will and conviction are tested as they fight for the future they hope to see..
Heather Morris is a native of New Zealand, now residing in Australia. For several years, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays. In 2003, she was introduced to a gentleman who had “a story worth telling,” which formed the basis of her first novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and its follow-up, Cilka’s Journey. Her third novel, Three Sisters, concluded the Tattooist trilogy. One of the twenty-first century’s best-selling books, The Tattooist of Auschwitz was made into an acclaimed miniseries in 2024. Heather’s books have sold over nineteen million copies worldwide.
Aliza Luft is Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA and Acting Director of UCLA’s Bedari Kindness Institute and its Initiative to Study Hate. Her research asks why ordinary people make the choices they do in times of war and genocide, from the Holocaust to Rwanda: why they take part in violence, resist it, or look away, and how the same person can do all three. Her new book, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard University Press), received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, which called it “an exceptional addition to the genre of Holocaust histories.” Her work has won awards from the American Sociological Association and the Social Science History Association and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and on NPR. She lives in Los Angeles.
Event venue & nearby stays
1113 Montana Ave, 1113 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, United States
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