The history of World War II contains millions of stories for it affected millions of lives. A Time for Tears examines the lives of three: Andre from Soissons, France, Daniel from Topeka, Kansas, and Rachel from Paris. The swirling hurricane of this war catches them in a tangle of events and emotions.

Andre Jabot a teenage French aristocrat, is enraged by the killing of his young brother as the Nazis blitz the nearby village of Soissons. He swears vengeance and finds his way to England to join De Gaulle and the Resistance.

Daniel Hagelman, a young Jewish grocer from Kansas, cannot turn his back on the horror of Hitler’s Nazis and travels to England to volunteer in the Royal Air Force, leaving behind a wife and newborn baby girl.

Fifteen-year-old Rachel Ropfogel’s parents, upper class Parisian Jews, see the oncoming disaster as France falls to the Nazis. They arrange sanctuary for her in the remote village of Le Chambon sur Lignon where she assumes a new identity, Simon Bouret, a twenty-year-old art teacher.

Each of these characters become members of the French Resistance and find themselves pursued by the relentless SS officer, Fredrik Haught.

Murder, torture, chaos, the dogs of war, nip constantly at their heels. Orphaned children, caged babies, starving captives: cyanide tablets become an attractive alternative.

In war, many die, some survive, the war ends, but only if survivors remember and teach future generations what they have learned, only if they remember A Time for Tears.

Jerilynn Jones Henrikson