Star Crossed by Heather Dune Macadam and Simon Worrall

Star Crossed: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler’s Paris

It’s always exciting for a writer–or in this case–two writers to have a story come to them in a roundabout way. You might be working on something totally different and then suddenly you find yourself enthralled with a story and you can’t let it go. That’s what happened to the husband and wife writing team of Heather Dune Macadam and Simon Worrall.

You will enjoy discovering the ‘story behind the story’ as the pair join me to discuss; STAR CROSSED: A True Romeo and Juliet Story in Hitler’s Paris. Both have spent many years in Europe and know Paris well, so it was literally beshert—meant to be— that a woman would come to them with a story about her sister, Annette, who was an artist at the time of the Nazi occupation of Paris.

They have given life to two young people whose world was turned upside down when France fell to Germany. A fun loving talented artist, Annette Zelman had a wonderful future ahead of her as a student at the Académie de Beaux-Arts was a dream come true for a young Jewish girl. At the Café de Flore in Paris, where Picasso, Giacometti, and Simone de Beauvoir might be chatting over coffee, Annette met Jean Jausion, a Catholic.

Using original texts, research, and interviews with Annette’s 90+ year-old sister and family members, the authors create the excitement of the life or Parisian artists and intellectuals–the tragedy of two lovers torn apart by war.

About the book:

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 includeSimone 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 historyZJean JausioUS