Staff Picks
In the summer of 1942, the French police arrested thousands of Jewish families and held them outside of Paris before shipping them off to Auschwitz. On the 60th anniversary of the roundups, an expatriate American journalist covering the atrocities discovers a personal connection—her apartment was formerly occupied by one such family. She resolves to find out what happened to Sarah, the 10-year-old daughter, who was the only family member to survive. The story is heart-wrenching, and Polly Stone gives an excellent performance, keeping a low-key tone through descriptions of horror that would elicit excessive dramatics from a less talented performer. Her characters are easy to differentiate, and her French accent is convincing. De Rosnay's novel is captivating, and the powerful narration gives it even greater impact.
It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London. And President Roosevelt is promising he won't send our boys to fight in "foreign wars."
But American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home. Frankie's radio dispatches crackle across the Atlantic ocean, imploring listeners to pay attention-as the Nazis bomb London nightly, and Jewish refugees stream across Europe. Frankie is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to action and they will join the fight.
Meanwhile, in Franklin, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James hears Frankie's broadcasts and knows that it is only a matter of time before the war arrives on Franklin's shores. In charge of the town's mail, Iris believes that her job is to deliver and keep people's secrets, passing along the news that...
DiCamillo's latest novel, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, may well be her best. It is an elegant volume of creamy pages with a handsome typeface and generous margins in a pale green binding. Bagram Ibatoulline's haunting color plates and sepia illustrations at the beginning of each chapter evoke the era of Andrew Wyeth, Howard Pyle and Maxfield Parrish. The novel is set in the storybook land of no specific time or locale. There are no annoying cellphones or Starbucks cafes. Not even the pictures give a clue to the exact period covered by the events. It could be the America of the Great Depression reconstructed on a vast Hollywood back lot.
