SKYLARK

Two urgent stories of survival, set nearly 300 years apart, are connected by treks through Paris’ ancient underground tunnels.

In 17th-century France, dyer’s daughter Alouette Voland’s ambitions (she dreams of selling her own formulas for fabric hues) land her in Salpêtrière, a dread women’s madhouse. In mid-20th-century Paris, Dutch medical doctor Kristof Larsen finds his psychiatric practice disrupted by Nazi invasion. While their concerns and paths diverge, these characters share a commitment to truth and justice, qualities discouraged in their eras. Take, for example, the bigoted concierge of Kristof’s apartment building, or the elitist noblewoman who runs Salpêtrière, the rapist madhouse guards, and the nasty Gestapo officers—whether it’s 1664 or 1939, cruelty, greed, and self-interest spring up regularly in human history. Fortunately, so do kindness, compassion, and valor, all of which Alouette, Kristof, and their small bands of stalwart friends demonstrate as they seek to escape and help others, too. Since the dual-narrative structure presses urgently toward resolution for both groups, Alouette and Kristof’s friends seem less like secondary characters than people whose stories you’d like to learn more of when the time is right: Marguerite, who keeps a ledger of crimes by madhouse workers; Alesander Extebarria, Kristof’s Basque comrade who understands wartime subterfuge; and Sasha Brodsky, whose Jewish identity both destroys her once-placid life and gives her the determination to stay alive. The book opens after the terrible fire at Notre Dame de Paris in 2019, as a conservator finds an exquisite fragment of stained glass etched with a skylark. Alouette’s beloved, Étienne, is a miner who once carved a tiny stone skylark for her because of her name. Wisely, McLain does not force a skylark into Kristof and Sasha’s story, instead allowing this avian symbol to lightly land as a reminder of transcendent hope.

Although very little ties the two stories together, perhaps their shared thread of resolve is enough.