the girl you left behind

“The Girl You Left Behind” consists of two stories that revolve around an eponymous painting by the French artist Edouard Lefevre. The subject of his painting is his wife Sophie. When the novel begins, it is 1916, and the Germans have occupied the town of St. Peronne, where Sophie helps her sister and brother tend to the family hotel. Her husband is off at war. The German Kommandant of the area, an educated man, becomes obsessed with the painting of Sophie. Sophie offers herself and the painting to the Kommandant in exchange for getting her husband released from a prison camp in Germany. Unexpectedly, Sophie is arrested by the Germans and is never seen or heard from again.

In 2006, four years after her husband has died, Liv Halston is attempting to get by on her own. The painting “The Girl You Left Behind” is given to Liv as a gift before her husband’s death. Liv begins a relationship with Paul McCafferty, who later learns that his company has tasked him with hunting down the very same painting owned by Liv, for it is claimed to be stolen during World War I, shortly after Sophie’s arrest. This ruptures their relationship. Liv refuses to give up the painting, and eventually, Paul quits his own side and through an investigation, learns that the painting was given as a gift to the Kommandant in the first place. It is also learned that Sophie was actually reunited with her husband, and lived out a happy life with him in Switzerland

the girl you left behind