Berlin, 1931, the year Germany was lost to the Nazis. Hannah Vogel, a crime reporter, wanders into the Hall of the Unnamed Dead to examine the police reports from which she gathers her stories each week. Instead she sees her brother’s photograph on the wall, his long hair and beautiful features wet from being dragged out of the Spree River, an anonymous floater. But Hannah’s identity papers, and with them her ability to talk to the police, are on their way to America in the hands of her Jewish friend Sarah. Until Sarah mails back her papers, she is trapped with only her journalist skills to figure out who killed her brother. But that is the least of the traps Hannah will step into.
Cantrell builds a surprising story. You haven’t heard this one, even if you’ve read a great deal about the Holocaust and the lead up to World War II. It’s dark, but not overwhelmingly grim, as WWII tales can be. The plot takes unexpected turns and the characters are convincingly drawn, both from the historical and psychological point of view. Cantrell’s persuasive and complex characters will pull your sympathies in directions you feel a bit uncomfortable about, to characters you otherwise despise, as well as to brave people whom you hold your breath for, turn those pages so quickly for. Humanity—never an easy project to depict with subtle veracity. Cantrell excels at it.
One theme is developed with particular sensitivity: the parent-child relationship. A five-year-old boy appears late one night on Hannah’s doorstep. He insists she is his mother, which, of course, Hannah can be quite sure she’s not. But she takes care of him and while searching for his real parents, she grows to love him. She had already served as mother to her brother Ernst, whose terrible end and troubled life she partially blames herself for. How can she be a parent to this little boy entrusted to her when she had failed her brother? But, as Cantrell’s subtle portrayal shows us, she is an excellent mother both to her lost brother and Anton, the mysterious child. Hannah falls in love with a wealthy, handsome banker, Boris, who has come with his daughter to witness the rape trial Hannah’s covering—and we meet another conflicted, devoted parent. Both Hannah and Boris will face excruciating choices for their children. Their common understanding of the value of what they are doing is one of the foundations of their friendship. Then there are some less benign parents. Cantrell avoids the saccharine and brings us a complicated, humane exploration of mothers, fathers, and their children. It’s only one of many resonances in this engaging book.
I’ve just discovered these treasures of historical mystery. A Trace of Smoke is the first, then A Night of Long Knives, and her most recent, A Game of Lies.
Because of Rebecca’s books (which I thoroughly enjoyed), I explored this era which I had previously avoided – and learned so many things new to me. She has researched the historical details so well, I learned more about the people from her stories than I did from textbooks. I most appreciate the feminine viewpoint she uses and the things Hannah can do as a woman that a man of the period would never be able to do without being arrested or killed. What a great storyteller! I can’t wait for more of her books.
I agree. I’m often hesitant to read books set in Germany in WWII after years of teaching holocaust etc in high school. But Rebecca has a way of treating the period differently than anyone else I’ve read. No less threatening and vile, but somehow she brings a new angle that intrigues me very much.
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