Sign In Forgot Password
Donate to the Bridge Campaign!

KN Book Club: "Village of Secrets" by Caroline Moorehead

Tuesday, February 18, 2020 23 Shevat 5780

7:30 PM

Discuss Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead (nonfiction) at the home of Louise Kelley and Jessica Weissman. RSVP here.

This book tells the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche, one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of this tiny mountain village and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, OSS and SOE agents, and Jews. Many of those they protected were orphaned children and babies whose parents had been deported to concentration camps.

Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose their Nazi occupiers. Village of Secrets reveals how every one of the inhabitants of Chambon remained silent in a country infamous for collaboration. Yet it is also a story about mythmaking, and the fallibility of memory.

Easily available in paperback.  Some copies available, including large print, in the MoCo library.  DC library has several available copies.  MoCo also has a few copies in audiobook form. 


Here are the rest of KN Book Club's readings for the year, in suggested order.  (Please note that the order may change.)

  • Millard Salter's Last Day by Jacob Appel (fiction)
  • The Forgetting River: A Modern Tale of Survival, Identity, and the Inquisition by Doreen Carvajal (nonfiction)
  • The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict (fiction)
  • The Exodus: How it Happened and Why it Matters by Richard Elliott Friedman (nonfiction)
  • Gateway to the Moon, a novel by Mary Morris
  • If All the Seas Were Ink, a memoir by Ilana Kurshan
  • Inside, Outside by Herman Wouk (fiction)
  • The Jews of Islam by Bernard Lewis (nonfiction)

We look forward to seeing many of you at these meetings.

Share Print Save To My Calendar
Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784