Skylark: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel
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A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!
The New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife weaves a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below—where a woman’s quest for artistic freedom in 1664 intertwines with a doctor’s dangerous mission during the German occupation in the 1940s, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time.
1664: Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette's efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpêtrière asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined.
1939: Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.
A spellbinding and transportive look at a side of Paris known to very few—the underground city that is a mirror reflection of the glories above—Paula McLain’s unforgettable new novel chronicles two parallel journeys of defiance and rescue that connect in ways both surprising and deeply moving.
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK!
The New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife weaves a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below—where a woman’s quest for artistic freedom in 1664 intertwines with a doctor’s dangerous mission during the German occupation in the 1940s, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time.
1664: Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette's efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpêtrière asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined.
1939: Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.
A spellbinding and transportive look at a side of Paris known to very few—the underground city that is a mirror reflection of the glories above—Paula McLain’s unforgettable new novel chronicles two parallel journeys of defiance and rescue that connect in ways both surprising and deeply moving.
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Community Reviews
Every city has two faces: the surface everyone sees, and the one below that few remember. Beneath the feet lies another Paris–one of ancient secrets and words of defiance. An architecture of escape routes and carefully constructed plans. A Paris of resistance that awaits in the dark for its moment to shine. The labyrinth below is layered not just in limestone, but in memory, mystery, and mutiny. The catacombs and quarries served for centuries as escape routes, smuggling channels, and hiding places–spaces of secrecy, but also of survival and subversion.
Down in the tunnels carvings of birds take flight. Some say the birds represented the dove in the story of Noah, promising land and safety after a long journey. But others perceive them as larks, there to remind us that there’s sky above, however far away, even when the darkness threatens to flood the soul: We were here. We mattered. We never stopped looking for ways to be free.
We reach to attain it, but freedom can’t be possessed. It is a practice, exercised like a muscle. It’s more than escape—it is learning to live with the weight of what you’ve seen, what you’ve survived. It’s carrying the memories of those who are still suffering, the guilt of getting away when others can’t. It’s finding a way to build something new from the ashes of everything you’ve lost.
It’s an invitation to see the beauty that exists everywhere around us. The flashing wing of a bluejay above the cliffs. The soft flaxen bloom in a pool of sunlight. The iridescent sheen on the underside of a mussel shell. Skylark blue. An emblem carved in stone beneath Paris, now stitched into living memory. A testament to defiance, to resilience, to the tenacious beauty that emerges from the darkest places.
To read historical fiction is to embark on an archeological adventure into the forgotten, the overlooked, the nearly lost stories of the past and then to imagine what remains, deep in the soil of the silences. Paula McLain’s Skylark is an exquisite reminder that the past isn’t behind us; it’s beneath us, a hidden treasure waiting to be found.
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