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Summary
Summary
From the internationally bestselling author of The German Girl , an unforgettable, "searing" ( People ) saga exploring a hidden piece of World War II history and the lengths a mother will go to protect her children--perfect for fans of Lilac Girls , We Were the Lucky Ones , and The Alice Network.
Seven decades of secrets unravel with the arrival of a box of letters from the distant past, taking readers on a harrowing journey from Nazi-occupied Berlin, to the South of France, to modern-day New York City.
Berlin, 1939 . The dreams that Amanda Sternberg and her husband, Julius, had for their daughters are shattered when the Nazis descend on Berlin, burning down their beloved family bookshop and sending Julius to a concentration camp. Desperate to save her children, Amanda flees toward the south of France. Along the way, a refugee ship headed for Cuba offers another chance at escape and there, at the dock, Amanda is forced to make an impossible choice that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Once in Haute-Vienne, her brief respite is inter-rupted by the arrival of Nazi forces, and Amanda finds herself in a labor camp where she must once again make a heroic sacrifice.
New York, 2015 . Eighty-year-old Elise Duval receives a call from a woman bearing messages from a time and country that she forced herself to forget. A French Catholic who arrived in New York after World War II, Elise is shocked to discover that the letters were from her mother, written in German during the war. Her mother's words unlock a floodgate of memories, a lifetime of loss un-grieved, and a chance--at last--for closure.
Based on true events and "breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart" ( The New York Times Book Review ), The Daughter's Tale is an unforgettable family saga of love, survival, and redemption.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Impossible choices faced by loving parents lie at the heart of this underwhelming tale by Correa (The German Girl). The story opens in New York City in 2015, when the elderly Elise Duval receives a phone call from a strange woman who had recently been in Cuba and found some letters that belong to Elise. The narrative then jumps back to Berlin, starting in 1933 and continuing through 1947 in France. After Julius Sternberg, a Jewish doctor, dies in a prison camp, his wife Amanda carries out his wishes that the rest of the family leave Germany. The plan is for their two daughters, four-year-old Lina and five-year-old Viera, to live in Cuba with an uncle. Unable to secure the necessary travel documents to accompany them, Amanda will go to an old friend, Claire Duval, in France until it's safe to bring the girls back. At the last minute, Amanda decides Lina is too young to go and sends Viera alone. Amanda and Lina's new life in Haute-Vienne with Claire and her daughter, Danielle, turns dangerous when WWII erupts and the Germans arrive in France. Lina and Danielle hide out in an abbey, but in 1944, the Germans come looking for weapons and one of their missing soldiers. While Correa convincingly evokes the perils of occupied France, his characters rarely move beyond being one-dimensional, and the hasty conclusion about how the war ended for Viera and Lina is unsatisfying. Readers interested in WWII fiction have plenty of better options elsewhere. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A Holocaust chronicle touching on survivor's guilt and the force of family ties.In his second novel, Correa (The German Girl, 2016) tells the story of Lina Sternberg, a Jewish girl born in Berlin in 1935 to a heart doctor and his spirited wife, Amanda, owner of a bookshop destroyed by the Nazis. Lina endures terrible suffering and loss during the war but eventually settles in America and starts a new life. She suppresses the painful memories of her early days and almost manages to shed her true identity. The first part of the book, spanning the years 1933 to 1942, focuses on Amanda and her frantic efforts to save Lina and her older sister, Viera, from the Nazi horrors. Viera is shipped off to Cuba, where Amanda's brother lives; Lina and her mother hide out in a French village under the protection of a Christian woman named Claire, but they wind up in a horrific French internment camp. Amanda, however, engineers a daring escape for her daughter, who is reunited with Claire and her daughter, Danielle. Though grim, this part of the narrative is gripping and stirring. The second part is also eventful, but it meanders and lacks focus. Plus, the young Lina (now called Elise), unlike her mother, is not a strong enough character to anchor the action. There is vivid writing, especially in the first part, and some memorable imagesfor instance, Amanda's talismanic botanical album, filled with hand-painted pictures of plants and flowers. As in The German Girl, the real-life 1939 voyage of the ocean liner St. Louis from Hamburg to Havana figures in the plot; here, the 1944 S.S. massacre of villagers in the tiny French town of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limoges region also plays a role.Though it's sometimes involving and insightful, Correa's novel is ultimately too diffuse to have the intended impact. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Amanda Sternberg has a comfortable life in Berlin with her cardiologist husband, Julius, and their two little daughters, Viera and Lina, until the Nazis come into power. Julius is arrested, but he has already set in motion a plan to keep his family safe. Passage has been secured onboard a ship bound for Cuba, but only for two, so arrangements have been made for Amanda to go to France. On an impulse, she sends Viera off to Cuba alone and takes Lina with her to a tiny village in Haute-Vienne, where they will be sheltered by a Catholic family. When the Nazis penetrate even that remote area, Amanda and Lina are rounded up and sent to a provisional internment camp. Just as Julius did years before, Amanda concocts her own plan to get Lina to safety. Even in retreat, however, the Nazis remain a threat, and Lina must find a way to survive on her own. As he did in The German Girl (2016), but focusing this time on occupied France, Correa offers a gripping and richly detailed account of lives torn apart by war.--Mary Ellen Quinn Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NOVELS SET DURING World War II can seem dismayingly similar: Families are separated, dangerous missions are undertaken, friends disappear. The books may be engrossing but the formulaic plots sometimes leave a reader wanting an unexpected twist. Armando Lucas Correa's the daughter's tale (Atria, $27) inventively satisfies that want. What's more, it's better written and more tightly edited than most books in this genre, and the story line is breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart. Or more to the point, the silence between the heartbeats. The novel starts in present-day New York when an elderly woman, who has just received a package of letters from her past, collapses from a heart attack: "One ... silence, two... silence, three... silence, four, five. She took a deep breath, waiting for the next heartbeat." And from there we rush back in time, as if coursing through her bloodstream, to a young Jewish family caught in the vortex of anti-Semitism in late 1930s Berlin. Julius, the husband, is a doctor, a heart specialist; his wife, Amanda, runs a bookshop; they will soon have two young daughters. Julius insists on staying put, providing for his patients, thinking the madness will stop: "Why flee and start all over again?" But then Nazis come to Amanda's store to burn her books, the local synagogue is destroyed by fire and Julius is arrested. From his cell, Julius manages to get word to Amanda as he is dying, instructing her how to flee the country and providing her with money and documents. The plan is for her to put her children, ages 6 and 4, on a ship bound for Cuba, where they can live with her brother, and for Amanda to go to a small French village to live with an old family friend and wait out the war. But as she is about to put her daughters on the boat, Amanda has a lastminute change of heart: She sends her elder daughter, Viera, to Havana and takes her younger one, Lina, to France. Amanda sends letters across the Atlantic to Viera, but they all come back to her. Meanwhile, she needs to protect Lina from the war now coming to France, which means passing her off to one stranger after another, reminding her to count her heartbeats when she is afraid, just as Julius had always said to do. Correa's prose is atmospheric, but what's most fascinating about this novel is his portrayal of terrified yet strong female characters who anticipate future trials and methodically work through them. Amanda knows that each decision she makes will have an impact on the next, but her goal is always survival. IN MISTRESS OF THE RITZ (Delacorte, $28), Melanie Benjamin gives us another strong female character, only in this case she's trying to do more than just survive: Blanche Ross, a young American actress who arrives in Paris in the 1920s and marries Claude Auzello, who becomes the manager of the Hotel Ritz. Ah, the Ritz. The focal point of Parisian excitement and glamour with its celebrity guests: Coco Chanel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway. Monsieur and Madame Auzello take pride in the Ritz, and their role in making the visitors feel "safe" and able to "breathe a little more freely." Until June 1940, that is, when the "top-hatted doorman in a black overcoat" is replaced by Nazi soldiers. From there, mystery, intrigue and suspicion descend on the hallways and behind the hotel's closed doors. Looking for life where death abounds, Blanche joins the Resistance. When D-Day arrives and reports that Allied forces have entered northern France make their way to Paris, she sees freedom on the horizon and makes a crucial misstep. It is a mistake that sweeps Blanche, her friends and her husband into a whirlwind of terror - brutal interrogations and imprisonment - and exposes the secret that she has been trying to hide ever since she decided to leave the United States. As Benjamin has proved before, she has a way of animating long-forgotten history. Inspired by the story of the actual Blanche and Claude Auzello, "Mistress of the Ritz" is a vividly imagined thriller about two enigmatic people who left behind tantalizing clues about their lives. if it's suspense you want, look no further than Jennifer Ryan's THE SPIES OF SHILLING LANE (Crown, $27). Fans of Ryan's debut novel, "The Chilbury Ladies' Choir," will find this book even better - and those who found that first novel plodding or slow on the uptake will be drawn in by this quick and delightful mystery set in London in March 1941. In the wake of her divorce and spurred by her demotion as head of her village's Women's Voluntary Service, Mrs. Braithwaite is forced to re-evaluate her life. She has a secret to tell and she heads to London to make amends and offer a confession to her only daughter, Betty. But Betty is nowhere to be found. Mrs. Braithwaite searches everywhere for her fiercely independent daughter, through the streets of London during the Blitz and in its hospitals filled with bombing victims. Mr. Norris, her daughter's landlord, becomes Mrs. Braithwaite's reluctant sidekick, and together they enter into dive bars, secret meetings of the British Union of Fascists and underground spy rings with double agents and fake passports. All the while they are looking for clues, trying to evade capture, kidnapping and worse - and becoming unlikely friends. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that Ryan has created more than a potboiler. She uses the story to explore maternal love and the sometimes fraught relationships between mothers and daughters as well as the capacity for friendship among strangers. Ryan's subtlety shines in her acknowledgment of the importance of remembering the people who pass through our lives ("I'd like people to talk about how I helped them," Mrs. Braithwaite says) and in her descriptions of how war and conflict can teach empathy ("I can hardly believe how much of life I notice now") and change people for the better. familial love is also at the center of Rachel Barenbaum's debut novel, A BEND IN THE STARS (Grand Central, $28), an epic march across Russia during the summer of 1914 against a backdrop of dual menace: the impending war with Germany and the mounting hostility of the czar's army toward the Jewish community. The novel features a cast of characters centered on two siblings, Miri Abramov, a young Jewish surgeon, and her genius brother, Vanya, a physicist who thinks he can complete Einstein's theory of relativity if he witnesses the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, and by so doing gain passage to America for his entire family. Early in the book, the siblings are forced to split up in this quest because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment. Vanya travels with Yuri, Miri's fiance, to join an American scientist who plans to photograph the eclipse. But after Vanya leaves, Miri discovers that he is in danger. With the help of a Russian Army deserter - whom she hides in her basement and cares for while he recovers from an injury - Miri goes in search of her brother. Their search is a perilous one, confronting Miri and her soldier companion with unexpected threats and testing their relationship. As Barenbaum poignantly writes: "Everything in our universe is made of pieces." Yet "no laws are absolute. Life, the universe, they aren't written in stone." The dialogue feels remarkably honest, and time passes in the novel like a train hurtling toward its destination with stops, starts and lurches. The history of the period and the region has been carefully studied, but Barenbaum carves a fresh story from some of its most evocative and disturbing details. IF YOU CAN'T GET ENOUGH of 20th-century Russia, leap ahead 50 years to THE RED DAUGHTER (Random House, $26), John Burnham Schwartz's novel about Stalin's only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, who defected to the United States in 1967, leaving two children behind in Moscow. Svetlana's C.I.A. profile is revealed early in the book. It's a telling passage, one that sets up much of what follows in this sad, traumatic tale of Svetlana's life and her relationship with Peter Horvath, a young American lawyer whom the C.I.A. has tasked with bringing Svetlana to New York. (That lawyer is very loosely based on Schwartz's father, Alan.) The C.I.A. describes Svetlana as "an active, alert and intense individual," a "very dependent person used perhaps to being bullied by her powerful father." The report goes on to suggest that she is "prone to become a disciple or a follower," with a tendency to become "jealous and disappointed when others receive the acceptance and praise she wants" and "furious when she feels she has been misled or misdirected." The ensuing narrative proves just how prescient this analysis is. The story, which captures the mysterious Svetlana through her imagined journal entries and letters, as well as Horvath's "editor's notes," is lively and engaging. As a novel, "The Red Daughter" does exactly what good historical fiction should do: It sends you down the rabbit hole to read and learn more. Schwartz includes a great list of books that inspired him to write his novel and that readers might want to explore. Of special interest is the section on Svetlana's time in Scottsdale, Ariz., at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship, and her brief marriage to Sid Evans, a Wright apprentice and protege (modeled on the architect William Wesley Peters), with whom she has a son. Let's just say that there is another fascinating novel to be written about Peters and Wright's widow. SPEAKING OF FAMOUS DAUGHTERS, there's a new novel out about Alice Roosevelt, the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt. Reading about Alice - her rebellious nature, her attention-grabbing antics - is always a pleasure. That said, american princess (Berkley, paper, $16), by Stephanie Marie Thornton, is long - and it drags at times. The novel is written in Alice's voice and divided into three parts. It begins when she is 17 years old. President William McKinley has just died in office, and Alice is about to become the first daughter. The book ends near the final moments of Alice's life at the age of 96. The first section sets the scene: Alice is the wild child in the White House, the "connoisseur of mistakes," carrying a pet snake around in her purse, smoking and chewing gum and jumping into a swimming pool fully dressed while on a diplomatic mission. There's no question that she is desperate for her father's attention. Despite all the warnings, she falls in love with Congressman Nick Longworth. Yes, it's fun - after all, she's a celebrity behaving badly. The book picks up in the second section when Alice comes into her own against the backdrop of Nick's numerous affairs and drunken behavior. It's perversely satisfying to see Alice torpedo her husband's congressional re-election as she helps her father's unsuccessful third-party campaign to upset President William Howard Taft in his fight against Woodrow Wilson. She clearly wants a divorce from Nick, but it's not going to happen, so her loyalties are with her father. Good for her. The third part, which recounts her relationship with Senator Bill Borah; the birth of her child, Paulina; the death of various men in her life; and Paulina's suicide at 32, offers abundant proof that life isn't just a game for Alice - that joy and heartbreak are real for her. The book is an ambitious one, and it could have benefited from more editing. There's a lot to take in. Still, Thornton has done a great deal of research, so much that at times you feel as if you're reading a memoir. It's hard to say no to a book about Alice Roosevelt. it should also be hard to say no to a novel about the endlessly fascinating poet Elizabeth Bishop. What's not to like about a novel that reimagines Bishop's time in 1937 Paris, hanging out at Sylvia Beach's bookstore and drinking champagne at Le Boeuf sur le Tóit cabaret on the eve of World War II? A lot, in the case of Liza Wieland's PARIS, 7 A-M. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). Bishop's childhood, including her father's untimely death and her mother's mental breakdown, was unbelievably tragic, and her relationships in college and beyond provide much fodder to explore. Alas, Wieland's book is a disappointment. While some excitement and drama ignite nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, it's over before you can take it all in, and the writing is terribly disjointed. The ending skips through the years 1938 to 1979, wrapping up decades of Bishop's life in a mere 24 messy pages. If there is one positive outcome of reading this book, it is that it might make you want to rediscover Bishop's poetry, which, if you're like me, you may not have turned to since senior year of high school. Don't bother putting this novel in your backpack as you head out of town; pick up one of Bishop's collections instead. susan ellingwood is a former books and opinion editor at The Times.
