The Book of Lost Names
In 2005, an elderly librarian at a Florida retirement community named Eva Traube Abrams sees a photograph of a centuries-old religious text in a New York Times article about looted Nazi books and recognizes it instantly. She last saw it in a mountain village in occupied France in 1942. Kristina McMorris's 2020 dual-timeline novel flashes back to Eva as a young graphics student who escapes Paris with her mother after her father is arrested, ends up in a Free Zone town called Aurignon, and is recruited by a local priest and a bookbinder named Rémy into a network that forges new identity documents for Jewish children being smuggled to Switzerland. Eva and Rémy encode the children's real names into an old prayer book so that after the war someone will be able to find them again.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Book of Lost Names
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1942, Eva Traube and her mother flee Paris for the small village of Aurignon, where Eva uses her gift for forgery to fake papers for Jewish children sent across the Swiss border, and hides their real names in an old religious book.
Yes, partly. The Book of Lost Names is fictional but inspired by real historical forgers in the French Resistance who created false documents to save Jewish refugees. Kristina McMorris researched the documented history extensively.
Yes. A film adaptation has been announced. As of 2025, the project is in development.
The Book of Lost Names was written by Kristina McMorris.
The Book of Lost Names is a standalone novel by Kristina McMorris, not part of a series.
The Book of Lost Names is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.