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Forbidden Love
Across A Starlit Sky follows a young pianist in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam who risks everything for a Jewish family and a forbidden love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I read The Diary of Anne Frank many, many years ago. More recently, I became aware of the amazing loyalty and support of Otto Frank’s employees, particularly Miep Gies, his secretary, who kept the family and others hidden. While memoirs and other works of non-fiction describe the occupation of Amsterdam and the onderduiken, my research revealed a lacuna in fiction. Many of the most popular WW2 novels take place in France (Kristin Harmel, Pam Jenoff, and others), while fewer stories unfold in the Netherlands.
The Portugal timeline was a bold structural choice alongside a WWII story. When did you know Amelia’s story needed to be part of this novel — and what did she give Mirjam’s story that a single timeline couldn’t?
If I am honest, the story was inspired by a vacation in Portugal, rather than Amsterdam. I visited Belmonte and learned about the 500-year history of the Jewish community and the conversos. Then I visited Coimbra, the university, and the Fonte dos Amores, where I learned the story of Pedro and Ines. This planted the seed of forbidden love in my mind as a central theme. I also learned that the Esnoga in Amsterdam was a copy of the synagogue in Lisbon, destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. The Esnoga was built by Jews who escaped the Inquisition to the Netherlands. These connections and more sparked in my mind the idea of the dual-timeline story. Amelia’s story began to take shape before Mirjam’s, but very quickly, I saw how the two stories and timelines could be woven together under the common denominators of persecution, love, and survival. Amelia’s forbidden love affair opened the door to a similar storyline for Mirjam. The descriptions of the secret converso lifestyle helped to plant the seeds of speculation about Mirjam’s ancestry, and Amelia’s interest in the stars enabled a thematic thread to wind its way across the centuries and link them.
The book is deeply interested in hidden identity — faith kept secret across generations, names and histories buried for survival. What drew you to that particular form of inheritance and concealment?
The Story of Esther is familiar to most Jews. She is the arch-heroine, the hidden Jew, the savior of her people. I was particularly satisfied by the way I was able to enmesh her in the story. Jews have been forced to conceal their identity throughout various eras of history where being visibly Jewish meant risking livelihood, freedom, or life. As Mrs. Meijer tells Mirjam, “Unfortunately, in almost every generation a Haman rises up and tries to oppress us.”
Even in modern times, secret Jews continued to hide their identity. Practicing Judaism openly in Spain continued to be illegal until 1967, when the Spanish government granted non-Catholics the right of public worship. The Alhambra Edict of 1492 was only revoked in 1968. For generations in Russia and the former Soviet Union, Jews actively hid their identity to avoid intense state-sponsored antisemitism, discrimination in higher education, and restricted career opportunities.
In WW2, the Nazis did not offer their victims the opportunity to convert to save themselves. Some who survived, however, did so by procuring false documents, sending children to convents, or even hiding in plain sight. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitors were willing to spare heretics who converted to Christianity. Many Jews died or fled rather than betray their faith. Others continued the traditions in secret in order to survive without giving up their beliefs.
While hidden identity is a common theme in the two timelines, it is not exclusive to these two eras.
Despite the heavy historical material, the novel remains deeply interested in tenderness, rescue, and human connection. Why was that emotional openness important to you?
In essence, the story is an historical romance, the tale of star-crossed lovers, against the background of fear and unspeakable danger. I wanted to show that despite all the horrors going on around them, there was still the opportunity for love to reign supreme, for a happy ending. In the darkest of times, hope, warmth, friendship, and generosity of spirit can triumph.
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Two women. Three centuries apart. One choice that could cost everything.
Amsterdam 1939
As war looms, Mirjam, a young piano teacher, is drawn into a world of fear, resistance — and a love that could destroy her.
A gentile in a rapidly changing city, she falls for the brother of her gifted pupil, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family. But when Nazi forces invade the Netherlands, love is no longer safe — and neither is loyalty.
Entrusted with a dangerous mission, Mirjam must choose: the man she loves…or the lives she may yet save.
Portugal, seventeenth century.
Under the shadow of the Inquisition, faith is a crime — and love can be a death sentence.
Amelia Ferrera, the daughter of a secret Jewish family, lives a life of silence and fear. When she falls in love with the son of an Old Christian nobleman, their forbidden romance threatens to expose everything.
To save her family, she must flee — leaving behind the man she cannot forget.
Across centuries, their lives are bound by a secret that refuses to stay buried.
Across A Starlit Sky is a sweeping historical novel of love, sacrifice, and impossible choices — perfect for readers of WWII historical fiction and dual-timeline dramas.
For fans of Kristin Harmel, Pam Jenoff and Kate Quinn
Across A Starlit Sky
Across A Starlit Sky by Susan Shalev is a WWII historical novel that follows Mirjam Coelho, a young pianist in Amsterdam whose life becomes entwined with the Jewish Meijer family as Europe moves toward catastrophe. The story also reaches back to seventeenth-century Portugal through Amelia, a converso woman living under the shadow of the Inquisition, so the book becomes more than a wartime survival story. It is about hidden identity, inherited memory, music, faith, family, and the long echo of persecution across generations.
Shalev clearly enjoys building rooms, streets, cafés, synagogues, riverbanks, and train stations with patient detail. Sometimes I felt the descriptions slowed the pace, especially early on, but they also gave the novel its texture. Amsterdam feels lived in before it becomes endangered, which matters. The warmth of music lessons, the smell of cafés, the shine of a piano, the ordinary pleasure of a young woman beginning work, all of that makes the later threat feel more personal. The war doesn’t arrive in an abstract way. It presses into an already full life.
I also found the double timeline a thoughtful choice. At first, I wondered whether the Portugal sections would pull me too far away from Mirjam’s story, but they ended up deepening the book’s central idea: that history does not vanish just because people are forced to hide it. The connection between Jewish persecution during the Inquisition and Nazi Europe could have felt heavy-handed, but Shalev mostly lets the parallels build through objects, family stories, and emotional discovery. The novel is candid about fear and loss, but it is also interested in tenderness, rescue, and the stubborn human need to belong. It’s not a spare book. It leans into feeling. For me, the emotional openness gave the story its heart.
I would recommend Across A Starlit Sky to readers who enjoy historical fiction with strong family themes, Jewish history, dual timelines, and a clear emotional arc. It will especially appeal to people who like WWII novels that widen the lens beyond the battlefield and look at identity, ancestry, and survival across centuries. It’s reflective, accessible, and sincere, the kind of book I would hand to a friend who wants a moving historical novel with both sorrow and light.
Pages: 288 | ASIN : B0GNS6Q76T
