Courage in the face of cru­el­ty. Courage in the face of com­plic­i­ty. These are two of the key themes of Heather Morris’s engross­ing book The Piano Teacher of Mont­par­nasse. This is a Holo­caust nov­el, but it is also a nov­el about resis­tance and love, fear and determination. 

Mor­ris draws us into her sto­ry ear­ly on, when a Jew­ish fam­i­ly is con­front­ed by Gestapo offi­cers who have invad­ed their home, deter­mined to take them away. One fam­i­ly member’s name, how­ev­er, is not on their list: that of Josephine, the daugh­ter. Josephine’s moth­er brave­ly stands up to the offi­cers, telling them that if Josephine’s name is not on their list, they can­not take her. Josephine’s anguish at being sep­a­rat­ed from her moth­er and old­er broth­er is pal­pa­ble. ​“Run, go to Mlle Lev­al­lois,” her moth­er tells her. And so Josephine flees, to the home of her piano teacher, Andrée.

In the face of food short­ages, con­stant threats of betray­al, and the ever-present fear that liv­ing through a bru­tal occu­pa­tion engen­ders, the bond between Josie and Andrée deep­ens. Andrée’s deter­mi­na­tion to pro­tect Josie no mat­ter what is remark­able, giv­en the poten­tial cost to her and her beloved par­ents, all of whom are active mem­bers of the French resis­tance. Risk is the cur­ren­cy of their lives, and Josie’s pres­ence among them has added immea­sur­ably to that risk.

While try­ing to pro­tect Josie and com­fort her over her absent moth­er and broth­er, Andrée also finds ways to nur­ture Josie’s desire to strength­en her con­nec­tion to Judaism, lest she lose her sense of who she is and where she came from. It is a way to keep her teth­ered to her stolen fam­i­ly, to keep a frag­ile famil­ial bond from break­ing. A fel­low resis­tance mem­ber is rais­ing her son as Jew­ish in her own Jew­ish husband’s absence. The two Jew­ish chil­dren, Josie and Phillippe, meet dur­ing the first night of Chanukah, and the sym­bol­ism of light­ing the hol­i­day lights in secret and in fear is lost on no one.

It is these small ges­tures — grown enor­mous under the weight of war — that make this book so pow­er­ful. It is hard to read about Josie and Phillippe light­ing Chanukah can­dles and not think of Jews in ghet­tos and exter­mi­na­tion camps who sang, who recit­ed prayers, who held seders, who prac­ticed defi­ance. It is a reminder that a few peo­ple in the dark­est time put every­thing at risk, know­ing they might fail, but also know­ing that they had no choice. 

Still, this is not a book about suc­cess or fail­ure. It is a book about love, about a deter­mi­na­tion to hold fast to human dig­ni­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty no mat­ter the forces try­ing to crush all of that. And lest the title be lost in all of this, The Piano Teacher of Mont­par­nasse reminds us that music is a source of joy and con­so­la­tion, of remem­ber­ing and for­get­ting. It is a potent exam­ple of what humans can cre­ate, even in the face of incom­pre­hen­si­ble destruction.