"When the Nazis came, aEtienne Boltanski divorced his wife and walked out the front door, never to be seen again during the war. So far as the outside world knew, the Jewish doctor had fled. The truth was that he had sneaked back to hide in a secret crawl space at the heart of the house. There he lived for the duration of the war. With the Liberation, aEtienne finally emerged, but he and his family were changed--anxious, reclusive, yet proudly eccentric"--Amazon.com.