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Sebastian Ritscher
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THOSE WHO ARE SAVED

Alexis Landau

A heartbreaking World War II novel of one mother's impossible choice and her search for her daughter against the odds.
As a Russian Jewish émigré to France, Vera's wealth cannot protect her or her four-year-old-daughter, Lucie, once the Nazis occupy the country. After receiving notice that all foreigners must report to an internment camp, Vera has just a few hours to make an impossible choice: Does she subject Lucie to the horrid conditions of the camp, or does she put her into hiding with her beloved and trusted governess, safe until Vera can retrieve her?

Believing the war will end soon, Vera chooses to leave Lucie in safety. She cannot know that she and her husband will have an opportunity to escape, to flee to America. She cannot know that Lucie's governess will have fled with Lucie to family in rural France, too far to reach in time.

And so begins a heartbreaking journey and separation, a war and a continent apart. Vera's marriage will falter under the surreal sun of California. Her ability to write--once her passion--will disappear. But Vera's love for Lucie, her faith that her daughter lives, will only grow.

As Vera's determination to return to France and find Lucie crystalizes, she meets Sasha, a man on his own search for meaning. She is stronger with Sasha than she is alone. Together they will journey to Lucie. They will find her fate.

Alexis Landau is a graduate of Vassar College and received an MFA from Emerson College and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She is the author of The Empire of the Senses. She lives with her husband and two children in Los Angeles.
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Published 2021-02-23 by Putnam

Comments

Hard-hitting... Landau confidently illuminates her settings and her characters' psyches, [and] Vera's unwavering resolve to find Lucie amid the chaos of postwar France feels arrestingly real. Read more...

A profound and engaging story - Landau writes of the endurance of parental love in the face of Nazi occupation and terror, of finding those who were lost. I loved it.

Powerful... Landau brilliantly explores the blurred lines between good and evil as the characters wrestle with their own dire decisions and the choices of those they love. Once this magnetic book takes hold, it doesn't let go. Read more...

Those Who Are Saved is a stunning tale of indestructible love, of sacrifice and faith, and of one woman's fierce determination to find her lost daughter in an unrecognizable, war-ravaged France. Imbued with vivid, lush imagery and written with enormous sensitivity and heart, this gem of a novel has everything that I love in historical fiction, and it is one of the best I've read this year. I treasured every page.

With lustrous prose and tight pacing, Alexis Landau sets into motion the smooth machinery of a gripping novel. Against the backdrop of World War II and the Holocaust, Those Who Are Saved binds the reader into a story of maternal love, erotic desire, and sweeping romance. I was carried away from beginning to end.

[Landau] thoughtfully juxtaposes moments of daily life with the broader scale of war... Readers looking for a strong foundation of historical fact blended into a fictional story, with the research sources to back it up, will find that mix right here. Read more...

With poetic, mesmerizing prose, Alexis Landau creates a heartrending story of the unbreakable bond of maternal love. Those Who Are Saved brings to life a moment in history when all that is familiar disappears and every choice is potentially tragic. This gripping and compassionate novel continues to haunt me.

Tell Me About Your Book - with Alexis Landau Read more...

Exquisite... Those Who Are Saved is a complex, breathtaking story about personal and artistic survival, offering a profound contemplation on exile and its devastating effects on the thinking, feeling spirit. Highly recommended. Read more...

Those Who Are Saved is an achingly beautiful epoch about love's endurance. I was hooked from the start by the chance meeting of Sasha and Vera who are driven by creative energies to remake their fractured worlds. This tense journey encompasses exile from Eastern to Western Europe, then across the ocean to the glittering promise of Hollywood, only to be haunted by whispers of what was left behind. Alexis Landau is an amazing storyteller and her novel will whisper to you long after you finish.

UK/C: Orion

Such subtle and skilful writing, so evocative of the Second World War and the period following. We are drawn deep into the story of a mother who, escaping to America, had no choice but to leave her daughter behind in the heart of Nazi-occupied France. Absolutely haunting.

Those Who Are Saved is a gorgeously written, emotional novel about the unshakable bonds of mothers and daughters, even in the darkest times. Spanning characters and continents during WWII, Alexis Landau's vividly drawn book swept me up into the lives of Vera, Sasha, and Lucie. An unforgettable story of heartbreak, but ultimately of hope, resilience, and love I could not put this book down!