Paper Love
One woman’s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-World War II Europe, and an exploration into family identity, myth, and memory. Years after her grandfather’s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients A–G.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel—her grandfather’s lover, who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Valy’s name wasn’t unknown to her—Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. “She was your grandfather’s true love,” her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy’s story. They revealed a woman desparate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Obsessed with Valy’s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entire world of other people searching for the same woman. In the course of discovering Valy’s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.
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I received a free galley copy of this book from Penguin First to Read program. The book is about Sarah Wildman's search to find out what happened to her grandfather's first love during World War II and the Holocaust. Sarah comes across some papers belonging to her grandfather after his death, and among those papers are pictures of a woman she has never seen before, Valy. Her grandmother informs her that the woman is her grandfather's, Carl Wildman, first love but will not say anything more on the subject. This sends Sarah off on a journey to Europe to find out who Valy was and what happened to her after her grandfather fled to America as Hitler moved into Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Sarah uncovers a lot of information about how immigrations were handled for European Jews wanting to flee Europe as Hitler and the Nazi Regime took control of countries and spread anti-Semitic discrimination. Sarah's research leads her to several different cities and she meets several interesting people along the way, who help her decipher the documents she finds and answer burning questions she has about life in 1939 and 1940, leading up to the execution of Hitler's Final Solution. As Sarah follows the clues about Valy and the life she lived in Europe, she learns more about the kind of life her grandfather was living in America, about his own struggles and his determination to work hard enough to bring more family and friends, including Valy, to America. By the end of the book, Sarah has a clear understanding of her grandfather's life, but she also has managed to figure out what may have happened to Valy, as the path grows cold and there's no definite answer. Sarah can only assume what Valy's fate was.
I enjoyed this book and learned a lot of things about the immigration process for European Jews to the United States, including the limits the US government put on the numbers of European Jews entering the country during a time when being Jewish was not safe. Not only does Sarah learn a lot about her grandfather's life before her own father was born, but she learns a lot about how dangerous day to day life was in 1939 Europe. She talks about Kristallnacht and the Anschluss, about the businesses Jews lost as Nazi support grew, the work Jewish leaders did to keep track of Jews within their own communities and possibly provide them with useful jobs that would bring them food and water. As she journeys to find Valy, Sarah is very open about her feelings and her hopes for a happy ending. I think Sarah does an excellent job of giving a voice to Valy, making her real for the reader and bringing closure to her grandfather's own love story. This was a well written story and I'm pretty glad that I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy.
I was not compensated by the author or Penguin books for this review
