Full Circle

by Ann Port

My life was never the same after those forty-eight agonizing hours.

With these startling words, Veronique Boulet Ellison begins a tale of long-kept family secrets, days and nights of fear, supreme injustice, great love, incredible sacrifice, personal loss, priceless hidden art, and her dream to reclaim her heritage.

Please fulfill a dying woman’s request, Veronique pleads. Be my Monuments woman, Anne. Go to Paris. Locate and reclaim the paintings Mother hid from the Germans during the Occupation. Find the art the Nazis plundered from our home on July 17, 1942, during a mass roundup of Parisian Jews; the same night she began her final journey—to the death camp at Auschwitz.

Following vague clues from Veronique’s worn leather-bound journal and a cryptic poem left by her great-grandmother, Anne French begins her quest to find the missing paintings. During her search she faces overwhelming obstacles, great personal danger, and crushing betrayal. As the mystery deepens and Anne uncovers startling truths about her grandmother and great-grandmother, she begins to question assumptions and expectations she’s made about her own life.

The fifth of Port’s novels, Full Circle is historical fiction fraught with mystery, intrigue, memories of the past, and hopes for the future.

504 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2014