Star Crossed: A True WWII Romeo and Juliet Love Story in Hitler's Paris

For readers of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah who are hungry for a true account of Nazi Occupied Paris, Star-Crossed is the narrative nonfiction saga they can really sink their teeth into. Heather Dune Macadam and Simon Worrall transport readers to the past and introduce them to our Romeo and Juliet: a vivacious and beautiful, Jewish nineteen-year-old named Annette Zelman and a handsome young Catholic poet by the name of Jean Jausion. The pair are doomed to be torn apart by war, prejudice, and disapproving families in this deeply tragic and romantic historical tale.

Paris, 1940. The City of Light has fallen under German occupation. Among patriotic Parisians, the pursuit of art, culture, and jazz has become a bold act of defiance. So has forbidden love for talented and spirited Jewish teenager Annette Zelman, a student at the Beaux-Arts, and dashing young Catholic poet Jean Jausion. Despite their devout families' vehement opposition, the young couple finds acceptance at the famed Café de Flore, whose habitues include Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Django Reinhardt, and other luminaries of the Latin Quarter.

For a time, Annette and Jean feel they have eluded the brute might of the relentless Nazis — and more immediately, their parents' threats and demands. But as restrictions on the Jewish community escalate to arrests and deportations, the maleficent forces gathering around the young lovers set them on divergent and tragically inevitable paths.

Drawn from never-before-published family letters and other treasures, as well as archival sources and exclusive interviews, Star-Crossed offers us precious insight into the Holocaust and the lives French people bravely led under the Hitler regime. This breathtaking true story of beauty, art, liberation, and the transformative power of love resonates with an intimate story of undying devotion, seen through the prism of history.