Fic­tion

The Secret Orphanage

  • Review
September 1, 2025

In a tiny vil­lage in Ger­man-occu­pied France, school­teacher Celi­na ush­ers young Jew­ish chil­dren into her class­room. Every after­noon she pre­tends to send them home, as instead they sneak away to hide upstairs. But today, she can’t stop think­ing about the note left on her bed­side table last night. Writ­ten in code used by the Resis­tance, it told her a baby she’s shel­ter­ing could be reunit­ed with her mother…New York, present day. Haunt­ed by a loss he refus­es to speak about, Rachel’s French-born grand­fa­ther is slow­ly los­ing his mem­o­ries. Then Rachel finds a name scrib­bled into the old children’s book he used to read to her, which leads her to a French vil­lage with a chill­ing past. Noth­ing can pre­pare Rachel for what she finds there — and how her own future may be entwined with her grandfather’s wartime secrets. The Secret Orphan­age was inspired by an actu­al French vil­lage that saved more than 3,000 Jew­ish peo­ple, most­ly chil­dren, dur­ing the dark­est days of the Nazi occupation.

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