A BOY IN WINTER by Rachel Seiffert (fiction)

Rachel Seiffert writes beautiful spare stories about the struggle of ordinary people who are faced with making moral decisions in difficult circumstances.  In her latest book, she has written about a small provincial Ukraine town in November 1941, caught in a vice between the retreating Red Army and the new Nazi occupiers.  Seifert’s own maternal grandparents were members of the Nazi Party, and she is interested in what motivates people making ethical choices.

The novel opens as the Germans have advanced into Ukraine, and on a cold gray morning they were rounding up the Jewish townspeople for evacuation. While this is the backdrop of the story, the author moves forward from here with four main characters and their struggle with conscience.  We first meet Otto Pohl, a German engineer who has been sent to the front to oversee the building of a road through the Ukrainian marshlands to advance the front. Pohl, through letters to his wife, detests the brutality of the German army, and struggles with his response to what he is witnessing.

As the Jews are being herded into a central location, two young boys slip away without a clear plan or idea of what is actually happening.  The older boy, Yankel who is 13 just knows he doesn’t want to be part of what he sees happening to his family.  He takes his very young brother with him.  As they more or less wander aimlessly through the town which is under curfew, they come across a peasant girl, Yasia, who ignorant of events, has come to town bringing apples to her uncle to sell, also in the hope of seeing her boyfriend who is a member of the provincial police.  Not realizing the boys are Jewish, presuming they are war orphans, she takes them to shelter for the night in her uncle’s barn and feeds them.  It is only when she overhears them speaking Yiddish that she realized the danger she is in for hiding them.

It isn’t long before her uncle and neighbors realize the danger they all could be in.  She is advised to leave the town and head back to her family’s farm.  Set loose, the boys follow her.  Yasia fears for her family’s safety if she brings the boys home, yet she knows she cannot desert them.  She makes the decision to head into the marshland to an isolated village where her uncle lives.  Their three day journey through the frozen swampland emphasizes the physical struggle of the journey as well as the struggle Yasia has with her conscience. The themes of loneliness and isolation occur throughout the book.

Seifert’s writing is strong and she is able to handle the sadness of people caught up in war between two enemies on either side of Ukraine in a realistic way that is not maudlin.  Her characters all have to make decisions that reveal their strength of character.  I highly recommend this book to all readers.  It is an excellent choice for reading groups.

A TALENT FOR MURDER by Andrew Wilson (Fiction/mystery)

The talented biographer, Andrew Wilson, has written a clever fictionalized mystery based on a real life occurrence in the life of the Queen of Mystery, Agatha Christie.  I’m not fond of reading fictionalized stories of famous  people, but Wilson does a good job of imagining what happened to Agatha Christie in the days that she disappeared for a spell in 1926.  The real-life Christie had just discovered her husband, Archie, was having an affair with a younger woman.  As the rumor gained momentum, she left the house one day and disappeared causing a well-publicized national search.  That she had fled to the resort town of Harrogate was never really explained sufficiently to the public, and it is somehow fitting that the world’s most popular mystery writer would be the subject of a seemingly unsolved mystery.  It is a sure bet that Agatha Christie, the author of many books staring the now famous Hercule Poirot and the almost as famous Miss Marple, is known the world over.

In Wilson's account, written in a style not unlike Christie’s herself, we find a story full of twists and turns and red herrings, as well as a bumbling pesky reporter and a clueless chief inspector, hot on the trail of false leads.  Throw in a statistical and sinister character named Dr. Patrick Kurs and his invalid wife, and you will recognize stock Christie characters primed to move the action forward.  Besides these characters, there is a handsome young man who just may be working for the Secret Service and his girlfriend who gets caught up in the story when she poses as a reporter hot on Christie’s tail.

Wilson seems to have fun with Christie’s story, and has written an entertaining book which posits a fictional explanation of what could have happened to Agatha Christie when she went missing those many years ago.

WHAT REMAINS by Carole Radziwill (non-fic/memoir)

This is yet another book on the Kennedy family, but told from a different perspective.  I picked up the book at a library sale and saw that it had spent some time on the best seller list.  Radziwill is a good writer; she had been trained as a reporter and her writing displays that skill.  She tells her story of a young girl brought up on the wrong side of the railway tracks in a large dysfunctional family, but a loving one.  As a child she was allowed to run wild with her cousins, and saw a side of life that many children don’t see.  While Radziwill was not exactly a Cinderella, she did meet her prince, eventually swept him off his feet and married him.  But they did not live happily ever after.

Shortly after their marriage, Anthony Radziwill is faced with the fight of his young life against the cancer which eventually kills him.  The book tells of the struggle of both Anthony and Carole to overcome daunting odds.  Anthony was the son of Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy’s sister, and best friend of his cousin, John Kennedy.  Carole writes beautifully of their close friendship, and with her own close friendship with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.  Added to the sadness and bad fortune that beset the Kennedy family,  is the story of the tragic last flight of John and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. On the night their plane plunged into the water off Martha’s Vineyard, they were on their way to meet the Radziwills who were staying in the Kennedy home on the island.

While all the money in the world did not save these loving cousins from their tragic fate, Radziwill handles the story with compassion and bravery.  Ultimately the book is a sad one, but there are many uplifting moments of resiliency and courage, friendship and love.  I recommend the book as a different and intimate look into lives of privilege and fame.

BURY YOUR DEAD by Louise Penny (fiction/mystery)

Louise Penny is another in a long line of excellent female crime-fiction writers.  And this book does not disappoint.  This is the first Louise Penny book I have read, but it is number six in a series starring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. All told, she has written 13 mysteries which have won numerous awards.  Penny has won the prestigious Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year five times, and the equally impressive Anthony Award for best novel also five times.

Gamache is the head of Surete du Quebec’s homicide squad and in this book, he is taking a much needed break from the stress of a previous case involving terrorists who killed one of his squad. He is taking a holiday in Quebec City and staying with an old friend and mentor.  Gamache is wrestling with feeling responsible for the death of one of his own.  However as often happens with talented people who are noted for their ability, Gamache is soon recognized, and asked to help solve a local murder in Quebec City.  A controversial amateur archeologist is found dead in the sub-basement of the Literary and Historical Society.  The dead man was compulsively following a lead while trying to solve the 400 year-old mystery of where Samuel de Champlain is buried after his death in 1635.  As Gamache delves deeper into the mystery of the archeologist he also becomes ensnared in the mystery surrounding Champlain.

Along with the crime in Quebec City, there is also a sub-plot in the book which harks back to a mysterious death in a previous book by Perry.  It appears the case in the small village of Three Pines has been reopened, and Gamache’s partner Gabi is working on new evidence.  The story then goes back and forth between the two connected plot lines.

Perry is an outstanding writer and in this novel she introduces the reader to some of the fascinating  history of Quebec and the tensions between the British and French descendants who live there. In an afterward in the novel the author writes why she loves the old city of Quebec, and ends with:
“This is a very special book to me, on so many levels, as I hope you’ll see.   Like the rest of the Chief Inspector Ganache books, ‘Bury Your Dead’ is not about death, but about life.  And the need to both respect the past and let it go.”

I highly recommend this book to all readers.