Thursday, May 10, 2007

"The Border of Truth"

New from Counterpoint: Victoria Redel's The Border of Truth.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the 1940s a seventeen-year-old European Jewish refugee aboard a ship being returned to Nazi-occupied Brussels, after having been denied American port, writes a series of letters to Eleanor Roosevelt. He beseeches her intervention and tells his own story (the girls he’s kissed, the movies he’s seen). The minutiae of this young boy’s life mix with the mortal realities of the time in his communiqués. Decades later, in contemporary Manhattan, Sara is uncovering the secrets of her parents-secrets in which, through silence, she’s been complicit. The Border of Truth is a multi-faceted exploration of the experience of first-generation children of refugees (in this case of the Holocaust), and the ways in which the stories of their parents define their lives. Ultimately, these two very separate timelines converge as Sara can no longer keep her self-made promise not to ask her father what happened to him and his family during the war. When he thwarts her questions, the pieces of his puzzle find their way to her on their own. Fascinating, mesmerizing, and gorgeously told, The Border of Truth is a riveting read-sure to bring Victoria Redel to the wide and appreciative audience she so handsomely earns in these pages.