One of most wonderful things I've learned through Sarah's Key and the feedback I've been getting from readers all over the world --- and particularly American book clubs --- is that as a writer, you can really reach out and touch people in every sense of the word and that they want to thank you for it. I love it when my readers email me or tell me "they couldn't put my book down" and had to stay up all night to read it! I also love it when my readers recommend my books to their friends and family.I hope you will enjoy following my heroine Julia Jarmond, an American journalist based in Paris, married to a Frenchman. Commissioned to research the great "Vel d'Hiv" round-up of Jewish families that took place in occupied Paris during the war, Julia stumbles upon a family secret. But in her ardent quest for truth, she opens Pandora's Box. As a mother, as a wife and as a woman, nothing will be the same for Julia again. Sarah's Key is a story of loss, family secrets and silence that spanned sixty years. France's darkest days and the scars still left today are keenly examined in a tale of two families linked by silence and sorrow. Sarah's Key is the story of a woman and a man who were never meant to meet.
I wrote Sarah's Key in a way I had never written any other book before. I guess you can say I wrote it with my guts. This was the first time in my life I was writing a book about something that actually happened so I was very careful with dates and places. Some of the passages were very hard to write because I knew this is how it had really happened. This is what happened to those children, to those families.
After I'd written about 20 pages, I gave them to my husband, Nicolas, to read, as he is my first reader. I noticed he was taking a long time reading them, and I wondered why. Then he said to me when he had finished, "This is good, very powerful, you must go on." And then he asked, "Why did you write it in English?" (He is French and not bilingual like me.) I hadn't even noticed I had written it in my mother tongue. It was a surprise! But I knew why. Being half French, half English, I felt I had to retreat into my English side to write about this dark part of French history. So I went on writing Sarah's Key in English, although my previous published books were all in French. Also, having an American heroine, Julia, made it impossible for me to envisage her speaking in French. Many of my readers think I'm Julia Jarmond. No, I'm not. I am French, she is American, her husband is not mine, thank God! And her marriage is not mine either! But I guess Julia and I share the same horror, the same emotion, concerning the fate of the Vel d'Hiv children.
Writing this book has changed my life. I learned the truth about a certain part of my country's history. I learned it late and I learned it hard, and I still feel a scar when I think about those children. I am French, and this happened in my country, sixty-six years ago, in my city, just ten minutes from where I live.
When I recently toured the USA last November for Sarah's Key with the Jewish Book Council, I realized how much my book was being read and discussed for book clubs. I was, of course, thrilled. As an Anglo-French writer based in France, I must admit that in my country book clubs aren't so big, alas.
If you want to contact me about Sarah's Key, and if you would like me to call in to your book club and answer a few questions, please contact me on my brand new website at the book club page: http://www.tatianaderosnay.com/.
I'd be very happy to hear from you and your book club!
All best from France,
Tatiana de Rosnay
