Love and Death in Paris

A young couple struggles to survive in an evil land ravaged by the Holocaust in "Love and Death in Paris," the debut novel by journalist and author Charles Loebbaka. Jack Lamont and Katrine Bouchet meet briefly in a Paris museum in 1939 on the eve of World War II, the year before German troops occupy Paris and the north of France. The Chicago Tribune journalist and the French art history student fall in love amid the horrors of war and the Holocaust as Nazis and French police arrest Jews and others and deport them to death camps in Poland. Both narrowly escape death before they are reunited, only to be hunted by Paris police for crimes against the bloody Nazi-French Vichy regime. Their story begins at the end: I killed. I see red in my mind's eye. Kill the evil to save the good, an eye for an eye. It says so in the Hebrew Bible. The Code of Hammurabi. Amen. I never went to Confession to ask forgiveness. Maybe that's why I'm praying in a church pew. I know that, at any moment, I could be arrested. Or killed. I told him to meet me for what may be the last time. "I don't want to leave you, Kiki," he said. "Je t'aime de tout mon coeur. We'll go somewhere. Any place." "I have to go, Jacques. You can't stay with me." Katrine put her arms around Jack's neck and whispered softly in his ear. "Je vais attendre pour vous, Jacques. I will wait for you. Attendez-moi. Wait for me." "I'll wait for you until we're together again," Jack promised. They walked slowly down the cinder path in the park under a cathedral of trees. Fallen chestnuts crunched under their shoes. They held hands. Young lovers. They heard the roar of a vehicle. A jeep with uniformed police was speeding at them…