Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. She has received Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2013, and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net.

Sandell Morse is a non-fiction writer whose works have appeared in several major literary magazines, including, Ascent, Ploughshares, and Solstice. In this year that marks the 80th anniversary of the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Auschwitz, this memoir reflects on a crucial time in our world's history that still reverberates today and provides a moving tribute to those who resisted oppression and fascism. In the course of six years at a writing residency in France, during which she met with survivors and historians, she painstakingly pieces together the puzzle that had been beguiling her over the years: what was the real story of the French Jews under the Vichy government during the Second World War?ĭriven by her dogged curiosity and determination to uncover the truth, and with a fossilized shell she'd found in the wall of the Jewish quarter in Paris as a talisman, she seeks deeper meaning and understanding of her own Jewish heritage.īy gradually gaining the trust of those she interviewed, Sandell reconstructs incidents of the civilians' extraordinary courage in resisting the Vichy regime and Nazi occupation.įrom the survivors' harrowing tales of escape, ingenious subterfuge, and just plain luck, she learns of a nunnery that was a safe-house for refugees a rabbi who gave his life to save hundreds of Jewish children the local gendarme who, endangering his own life, tipped the Resistance off to the upcoming Nazi roundups. In this haunting memoir that reflects on the Holocaust and its legacy, award-winning author Sandell Morse discovers stories of bravery and resistance enacted during WWII in southern France.

Annette Binder, author of the historical novel The Vanishing Sky! Join us for a fascinating conversation between Sandell Morse, author of The Spiral Shell: A French Village Reveals Its Secrets of Jewish Resistance in World War II, and L.

The vanishing sky by l annette binder