A desperate plea for help...

 The Unanswered Letter by Faris Cassell

From the blurb:

Dear Madam — You are surely informed about the situation of all Jews in Central Europe and this letter will not astonish you.

In August 1939, just days before World War II broke out in Europe, a Jewish man in Vienna named Alfred Berger mailed a desperate letter to a stranger in America who shared his last name.

By pure chance I got your address . . . I beg you instantly to send for me and my wife...

Decades later, journalist Faris Cassell stumbled upon the stunning letter and became determined to uncover the story behind it. How did the American Bergers respond? Did Alfred and his family escape Nazi Germany? Over a decade-long investigation in which she traveled thousands of miles, explored archives and offices in Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, and Israel, interviewed descendants, and found letters, photos, and sketches made by family members during the Holocaust, Cassell wrote the devastating true story of The Unanswered Letter.

My thoughts:

I loved this book so much! It's poignant and heartbreaking, thoughtful, gripping, unforgettable and beautifully written. Once I started, I didn't want to stop. No matter how many books I read about the victims or the survivors of the Holocaust, their stories always get to me. This one is no different. The history of the Berger family made me smile...and cry. And Faris Cassell is such a good writer! I was drawn to her own part in this story as well.

"Alfred and Hedwig Berger had been ordinary people, like most of humanity--like me. They were important because they were human. ... This dramatic letter had drawn me irresistibly and haunted me with questions that reverberated through my life. I hoped to understand, at least a little, how divisions that separate people could grow to Holocaust dimensions."

This is a such a compelling story. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of another favorite nonfiction read: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn. Both are amazing books and well worth reading!

Happy Reading!

Bookish suspense...

"You kill one guy, one time, and suddenly everyone thinks you need therapy, Ellery Hathaway thought as she stood in the biting wind of the subway T platform overlooking the icy Charles River. Doesn't matter if everyone is glad he's dead. She debated again whether to follow through on her shrink's orders to show up at the group meeting for survivors of violent crime. ... But Ellery knew all crimes were not created equal. There was getting mugged on the street, and then there was surviving an abduction by one of the world's most infamous serial killers."

Despite being on mandated leave from the police force, Ellery begins investigating two crimes involving two of the other violent crime victims in her group:  an arson that took place two decades ago, and a more recent rape. She calls on FBI agent, Reed Markham, for help, needing his profiling skills. And though it puts his promotion on the line, he flies to Boston when she calls because it's Ellery. Their complicated relationship began sixteen years ago, when Markham rescued a 14-year-old Ellery from a notorious serial killer. Her scars still run deep. And as much as Reed would like to keep her safe, her own impulsiveness keeps putting her in danger. Especially when she gets a little too close to the truth on one of her new 'cases'.

No Mercy is Joanna Schaffhausen's second book about Ellery Hathaway and Reed Markham. And it's just as good as The Vanishing Season (which you really need to read first). Besides Schaffhausen's compelling writing, I really like her characters. They're complex and flawed, with personality quirks and vulnerabilities that make them irresistible. I love Ellery's and Reed's tangled past and their uneasy yet growing friendship. I also love the moments Reed spends with his daughter, Tula; Ellery's basset hound, Speed Bump, is a favorite, too. And the mystery itself? It's suspenseful and clever and skillfully drawn out. And that ending! Whew. It's a good one. It makes me even more excited for Schaffhausen's next book.

Happy Reading!

In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke

"I was only a girl, alone among the enemy.

What could I do?"

Irene Gut was only seventeen when Poland was invaded by Germany on the West and Russia on the East. Separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and then forced to work for the German army, she found a way not only to survive, but to fight back. She snuck food into the Jewish ghetto, passed on information she overheard from the German officers she served, and managed to hide twelve Jews from the SS in the basement of the house where she worked. She even fought with the Polish Resistance. Her memoir is an amazing story of survival, courage, and sheer grit, and shows what World War II was like through the eyes and heart of a young Polish girl caught between countless enemies who refused to give up. It's honest and moving and several parts made me cry; I read it all in just one day and loved every single word. Irene Gut is such an inspiring person and her story is a truly memorable one. This is one book that's definitely going on my list of favorite reads in 2018!

"The war was a series of choices made by many people. Some of those choices were as wicked and shameful to humanity as anything in history. But some of us made other choices. I made mine. ... I did not ask myself, Should I do this? But, How will I do this? Every step of my childhood had brought me to this crossroad; I must take the right path, or I would no longer be myself. You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis, all at once. One's first steps are always small:  I had begun by hiding food under a fence."

 Happy Reading!

 

A bookish journey to Budapest...

Title: Katalin Street
Author:  Magda Szabo
Summary:  In prewar Budapest, the Elekes, Held and Biro families live side by side on gracious Katalin Street, their lives closely intertwined, their four children inseparable. Then, in 1944, during the German occupation, all their hopes and dreams for the future are shattered. Lives are lost. And those who survive are forever changed. They are haunted, not only by their own guilt and sorrow, but by their longing to return to their former lives on Katalin Street.

Adjectives that describe this novel:  introspective, poignant, and bleak

Favorite quotes from Katalin Street:

There were several ornaments and objects from her former home too, but none of them conjured up the magic he had been hoping for. Iren's new abode had turned out to be nothing like the one in Katalin Street, and even here he was haunted by the sense of being somewhere else. The marriage to Iren had showed him that she yearned and pined for Katalin Street just as much as he did, that she had not found it, and neither had her parents, who were locked in the same hopeless quest to recover it ... This tyranny of somewhere else was a cruel one. It stopped Balint from seeing both the reality that existed and what he would have liked that reality to be.

The people who were with me on that day were imprinted on my memory--some of them permanently, some for many years afterward--exactly as they were at the time...

It was the first time in my life that I had an inkling that the dead are not dead but continue living in this world, in one form or another, indestructibly...

It is not only facts that are irreversible, our past reactions and feelings are too. One can neither relive them not alter them.

This isn't exactly a happy read, but it is an interesting and thoughtful one. (It's also not very long.) I  like reading about Europe, and World War II, and the time period following it during the Soviet occupation; I think it's important for all of us to know and remember what those times were like for the people who had to endure them. So even though this novel is a little depressing and sad...

Happy Reading!

Final Girls...

Only Quincy remained.

All the others were dead.

She was the last one left alive.

Riley Sager's psychological thriller Final Girls is gripping, unsettling, and intense. It centers on Quincy Carpenter, the sole survivor of a brutal massacre at Pine Cottage ten years ago. By surviving this mass killing, she becomes a reluctant member of an exclusive club:  The Final Girls.  There are only two other members, Lisa and Samantha, who also survived horrific slaughters. Quincy has spent the last ten years proving that she's fine, that she's moved on. But she hasn't. Not really. And then Lisa dies. Murdered by someone who might be after Quincy next. And Samantha shows up on her doorstep, pushing Quincy to remember the past. And suddenly Quincy doesn't know who to trust; she's not even sure she can trust herself.

Well-plotted, full of suspense, and with some unexpected twists along the way, I'd characterize this book as a good read except for one thing. The characters. I wanted to like Quincy, but I found her passiveness in certain situations and her reckless self-destructiveness in others, especially when she's around Sam, completely frustrating. And I thought Sam was a lying bitch through most of the novel. Then the one character I liked from the start turned out to be someone completely different than I thought. Which made me not like this novel quite as much. I'd still classify it as a good read, and a compelling one, too; I just prefer novels with characters that I can like and root for all the way through, which is why I didn't love this one.

Happy Reading!

Similar reads (that I liked a little bit better):

     The Never List by Koethi Zan

     The Edge of Normal by Carla Norton