A 'Star Crossed' Book Launch

On Friday, August 25, at 6 p.m. Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor will host the book launch of “Star Crossed: A True WWII Romeo & Juliet Love Story in Hitler’s Paris,” with authors (and married couple) Heather Dune MacAdam and Simon Worrall.

Set in Paris, 1940, The City of Light has fallen under German Occupation. Among patriotic Parisians, the pursuit of art, culture and jazz have become bold acts of defiance. So has forbidden romance 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’s creative world. 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 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.

Authors Macadam and Worrell are a husband-and-wife writing team who have earned separate accolades. Macadam is author of the acclaimed PEN America Award finalist nonfiction Holocaust history book “999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz,” while Worrall has written two acclaimed books and spent his childhood in Paris — a city they beautifully portray here, full of art, music, love and light.

Macadam and Worrall divide their time between New York and England.

Canio’s Books is located at 290 Main Street, Sag Harbor. For details, visit caniosbooks.com.