When in 2019 a creative seed was planted in the mind of New York Times best-selling writer Juliet Blackwell, eventually propelling her to sit down and pen her newest book, The Paris Showroom, there was no global coronavirus pandemic. Nor were there Black Lives Matter protests and worldwide calls for racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd. Certainly, there was no Russian invasion and war in Ukraine.
Oakland-based Blackwell’s first historical fiction novel originated in 2019, when during a trip to France someone mentioned to her that Nazi prison camps had existed and were operated by Germans within Paris city limits during World War II. French men and women were frequently recruited to be prison guards. “I looked it up, and sure enough, it was in the 10th arrondissement,” Blackwell says in a phone interview from her home in the East Bay. “I never thought I’d write about World War II. Now, the book seems so relevant in ways I could never have anticipated. The bravery of the French resistance fighters then, and the bravery of people going out in the streets in Ukraine now, is astonishing. Making that decision to stand up and be brave—or not—we’re seeing that every day today, for sure.”
Blackwell is the author of a number of novels based in France, among them, The Vineyards of Champagne, The Lost Carousel of Provence, Letters from Paris and The Paris Key. She also writes the Witchcraft Mystery series and the Haunted Home Renovation series. Having lived in either New York or the Bay Area most of her life, Blackwell’s former careers before turning to writing full-time include work as an anthropologist, elementary school social worker, and as a professional artist and business owner with her own design firm specializing in decorative painting and historic renovation.
From her over-100-year-old house in Oakland, Blackwell makes annual trips to France with her boyfriend, a wine importer and native of Besançon in eastern France. In an interview in early 2019, she told me she doesn’t see apparitions or believe there are actual ghosts in her centurion house, but she definitely feels the home’s “haunted, paranormal energy.” It’s the perfect atmosphere for writing her mystery and haunted home series.
The annual visits to France and other locations in Europe provide similar fuel for the deeply researched novels she writes. The Paris Showroom is set In Nazi-occupied Paris and begins in 1944, a little more than four years after the Germans invaded the city. Protagonist Capucine Benoit is an artisan who before the invasion worked alongside Bruno, her father, to produce high-end intricately pleated fans. These are composed with rare feathers and brilliantly decorated with beads, or made with silks and fine cloths, upon which are rendered unique, hand-rendered paintings. Sold to wealthy individuals or haute couture fashion houses, their successful business was abruptly shut down when Capucine’s father is mysteriously betrayed to the secret police. Accused of being a communist sympathizer, Bruno, along with his daughter, is arrested.
Father and daughter are held by the Nazis and for a time unsure where they might be sent. Bruno inexplicably is deported. Finding herself alone, Capucine positions herself as useful to the Germans and saves herself from deportation to Auschwitz or another Nazi camp by exaggerating her connections to Parisian design houses. With her father’s whereabouts uncertain, Capucine is sent to a little-known Nazi camp located within the Lévitan department store in the center of Paris. In the store-turned-prison, hundreds of incarcerated French and Jewish prisoners of war sort through, repair and arrange to display for sale the valuable art, furniture and even common household goods the Nazis have looted from ransacked Jewish homes and businesses in Paris.
Meanwhile, Capucine’s estranged, soon-to-be 18-year-old daughter, Mathilde, leads a well-cushioned life in the home of her conservative paternal grandparents, where she has lived since girlhood. Capucine left Mathilde in their care for reasons that unfold gradually throughout the novel. What also comes to light are the stories of Capucine’s unconventional life and romantic relationships, the Paris jazz and nightclub scene in the 1940s, the role of Paris’ Résistance fighters and the American Harlem Hellfighters in the war, and other historical events and cultural movements.
When Abrielle, an old acquaintance of Capucine, arrives with her Nazi boyfriend to go “shopping” at the Lévitan department store, she discovers her. She proceeds to offer her former friend an occasional escape from the prison: to visit the penthouse apartment in which she is “kept” by her Nazi lover on the premise of redecorating and upgrading the furniture and art. Capucine accepts the offer—and guiltily, the rich food and warm baths that are nonexistent as a Lévitan prisoner—but is wary. Unsure if her friend is a betrayer and operating on a new level of deceit, her distrust is much like that of the prisoners whose guards—some of them former neighbors—sometimes appear to sympathize with their plight.
When Abrielle offers to help Capucine reconnect with Mathilde, she decides the act of kindness is enough to abandon all caution. To tell more would be a spoiler. Suffice it to say, there is liberation for Capucine and all of Paris, but it is freedom gained at a cost.
Blackwell says the violence of certain scenes and the flawed decisions made by some of the characters are necessary, plausible and serve the novel’s larger themes related to accountability and courage. “The compromises during wartime are something we all think about when thinking about World War II. Would we have been part of the resistance if we were living in Paris? Frankly, if I had had a small child, would I have risked that child’s life to stand up for a neighbor? I like to point out that many people in France didn’t know the Jewish people were being taken to be killed. The way it happened was incremental, with the Nazis spreading disinformation. It was easy to not know the real situation.”
Capucine’s choice to send her daughter to live with her grandparents was one she comes in the novel to regret eternally. “That flawed decision led her to reject the man she loved and who loved her. She couldn’t stand up to her grandparents and say this man, this Black man, is who I love. Because we’re human, our emotions get muddled. We can look back and see things we did with more clarity as we age. At the time, there’s willingness to make a devil’s bargain when we don’t know exactly what we want, what we deserve and will stand up for.”
Although she was familiar with the primary facts about World War II and knew well the French culture of that time, Blackwell was embarrassed to realize she had little idea about the war’s timelines. “I was unclear of the Third Reich’s where and when. Also, the details about the stars on the clothing people had to wear in Paris and that when people were carted away, it happened slower than in other parts of Europe. Another thing was that after the liberation of Paris, the war kept going for longer than I had thought. Paris was liberated in August of 1944, and Hitler didn’t kill himself until nearly a full year afterward. I wasn’t aware of how long the war went on and that they were still suffering into 1945.”
Blackwell’s characters, all of whom have lives, occupations, preoccupations and personalities based on people likely to have lived at the time, are entirely fictional. Even so, they came to “real life” in Blackwell’s imagination during the writing process. “The main characters always grow deeper and intensify as I write. I don’t know fully who they are until I write about them. The beginnings of my book are never set, because I know they will need to change once I finish the book. I leave those first chapters alone without editing each one and then go back and rewrite them. Capucine, what I realized by the end of the book was that she had strong regrets in her life. She almost felt she deserved to be imprisoned. I was fascinated by how personal a war becomes. Just like the pandemic, battles have impact on people’s lives. Capucine’s not only in prison, she’s imprisoned by her life and loss and all sorts of things. She had to forgive herself enough to be able to stand up for what she needed and to help other people. Maybe it’s what each of us must do to find our true courage.”
