The Boy with the Star Tattoo
1968: Sharon Bloomenthal’s life is one of grieving, from her parents’ early death to her fiancé’s recent disappearance at sea. When the Israeli navy recruits Sharon for a secret project in Cherbourg, France, she’s grateful for work to distract her from her grief. She welcomes the unexpected opportunity to travel out of Tel Aviv and to get to know Daniel Yarden, the enigmatic officer in charge of the project. Like her parents, Daniel was a Jewish orphan brought from postwar France to Israeli kibbutzim by Youth Aliyah, an immigration organization that worked to rescue Jewish children from homes, orphanages, refugee camps, and hiding places across war-torn Europe. Daniel’s story sheds light on Sharon’s own past, on the work of Youth Aliyah, and on the bravery of those who hid Jewish children within their homes and families during the occupation of France. Told through three narrators in different timelines—Claudette, a disabled French seamstress in occupied France; Uzi, a determined Youth Aliyah agent in 1946; and Sharon in the 1960s—The Boy with the Star Tattoo is a moving and mesmerizing novel.
The history in this story—the efforts to absorb Jewish children into families in occupied Europe and the work of Youth Aliyah to locate and rescue those children after the war—was new to this reader and made for a truly engaging read. The characters loved, worried, questioned, hoped, and dug deep to find courage they didn’t know they had. Through the alternating narration, the reader also tries to put together the story of Sharon and Daniel’s pasts. The history of the Israeli military’s secret Cherbourg Project was also gripping and made a great backdrop to the unfolding of the wartime story. An excellent and engrossing novel.
