The Lost Letter by Jillian Cantor: Proof of Unusual Daring

I've discovered a favorite story frame.
I love that thing where action is going on in the past while people in the present are researching or investigating or uncovering that story from the past. And we, too, are having that past revealed to us slowly as the people in the present are being drawn in or effected in some way.
Ya know?

Not unlike how coolly Dan Brown did The DaVinci Code. That was excellently written.
 
Jillian Cantor pulls off this story frame beautifully in The Lost Letter.


Set in both the present in California, 1989, and the past, 1933 in Austria as the Nazis are moving into the countryside of Austria and spreading their antisemitic violence, The Lost Letter  tells of a young man named Kristoff who has come to apprentice with an Austrian master stamp maker named Frederick Faber. Kristoff, a young man who, as a baby, was orphaned, has come to the Faber household to learn the trade of making stamps, postage stamps, using the engraving tools of his mentor Frederick Faber. All the while, Kristoff is amazed with his supreme good fortune to experience the warmth of the Faber family, the kindness and goodness of Frederick, and the comforting family-focused rituals of the Faber's Jewish traditions carried out each week. The weekly traditions display the family bond in a way that Kristoff has never experienced or imagined before.

A non-Jew, Kristoff sees the violence wrought by the Germans while standing on a hill overlooking Vienna on the night known as Kristallnacht, the night that Vienna was destroyed by the Nazis leaving glass strewn across the streets and buildings destroyed by fire. On that night, Frederick had traveled to Vienna and is now missing. The Faber family panics and grieves, all while the Nazis begin to terrorize the small bergs in the Austrian country side. Seeing the utter devastation of Kristallnacht, Kristoff muses, It is called Kristallnacht but it should be called Night of Tears rather than Night of Glass.

As a result of Krystallnacht and the encroaching Nazis, Kristoff becomes aware that the Faber's elder daughter Elena has been involved in a resistance movement with small efforts to thwart the Nazis and to defend her beloved Austria. This story line is inspired by real resistance workers during World War II Austria and shows us the strength and great determination of Elena. She is quite an admirable young woman.

In 1989, we have a devastated young woman, Katie Nelson, still fragile and wounded from her husband Daniel leaving her because he can't tolerate the time she is spending with her father, an elderly philatelist who has developed Alzheimer's.* Katie's father Ted has recently entered into a nursing home because his Alzheimer's has made it necessary for him to have continuous care and Katie spends a great deal of time with him. Her mother died years ago and Katie has had a wonderfully loving relationship with her father for all of these years.

In Katie's first scene, we see her taking her father's letter and stamp collection to a philatelist, hoping to find something of value in order to help with her father's care. Carrying her crumbling pile of stamps and things into the stamp store, Katie meets the store's manager and master appraiser Benjamin who promises to review the collection and call her if he discovers anything interesting among Katie's father's stamp and letter collection. A gem. That's what Katie is hoping to discover in the collection: a gem.

I'm not completely certain why Katie brings that dusty pile of papers to the stamp guy, Benjamin, when she does. She is in a place of utter devastation. Her husband has abandoned her in a moment of need. She is losing her beloved father to the ravages of Alzheimers, slowly, surely losing him one day at at time. Perhaps she is seeking something meaningful in his strewn life detritus? Perhaps she is seeking memories in this place where her father is losing his...

Edelweiss

The book is called The Lost Letter because Benjamin, the stamp appraiser guy, discovers an unopened letter in the pile of stamps and whatnot with an enigmatic stamp, a stamp known to have been carved and circulated during the Nazi occupation of Austria, however this stamp seems to have a faint, hidden (?) outline of the Austrian flower blossom edelweiss. Furthermore, the stamp is placed upside down on the envelope, symbolically suggesting that the letter is a love letter from one to another. Katie and Benjamin are both intrigued and, after some further research, set off on a bit of a journey to discover more about the stamp, the stamp maker, and, ultimately, the letter itself.

We begin to understand that Kristoff and Elena, the eldest daughter of Ted Faber, are, in 1933, in a silent and growing romance in spite of the horror in which they are living. And we begin to understand that the letter we are holding, with the upside down stamp, the fading ink, and the crumbling paper, might contain a heartbreaking love letter between two separated lovers, never to see one another again in the devastating world of Nazi-occupied Austria. 

Furthermore, we begin to understand that a delicate alliance is forming between the gentle Katie and the wounded Benjamin, somehow allowing a whisper of healing and love. Can this lost letter bring something found? 


While I have not read anything else by Jillian Cantor, I imagine I'll be adding more of her books to my growing pile of Must Read books. In The Lost Letter, I thoroughly enjoy her historical flair, her incredibly emotive writing, the tender and the pragmatic, the horror and the beauty, the pain and the promise. It's a must read. 

I'm giving this book a rating of seven of ten stars.

 

Will you read it?
If so, I promise you'll discover the contents of the captivating letter.  😊

*  Yeah, Daniel never really improves in this book...