The Border of Truth: A Novel [Hardcover]

Victoria Redel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 2007

Written by the critically acclaimed author of "Loverboy", "The Border of Truth" balances the weight of a Holocaust survivor's life upon his only daughter, as she tries to discover the truth behind his vow of silence. During the 1940s a seventeen-year-old European Jewish refugee aboard a ship being returned to Nazi-Occupied Brussels, after having been denied American port, writes a series of letters to Eleanor Roosevelt. He beseeches her intervention and tells his own story (the girls he's kissed, the movies he's seen). The minutiae of this young boy's life mix with the mortal realities of the time in his communiques. Decades later, in contemporary Manhattan, Sara is uncovering the secrets of her parents - secrets in which, through silence, she's been complicit. "The Border of Truth" is a multi-faceted exploration of the experience of first-generation children of refugees (in this case the Holocaust), and the ways in which the stories of their parents define their lives. Ultimately, these two very separate time-lines converge as Sara can no longer keep her self-made promise not to ask her father what happened to him and his family during the war. When he thwarts her questions, the pieces of his puzzle find their way to her on their own. Fascinating, mesmerizing and gorgeously told, "The Border of Truth" is a riveting read - sure to bring Victoria Redel to the wide and appreciative audience she so handsomely earns in these pages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1940, Itzak Lejdel, a teenage Jewish refugee from Brussels being held aboard a ship docked in Virginia, is one of 86 passengers whose visas have been rejected and are about to be returned to Nazi-occupied Europe. Itzak writes a series of pleas to Eleanor Roosevelt to intervene, filling his letters with colorful rumors about fellow passengers, endearing details about the movies he loves and his adolescent crushes, as well as harrowing tales about his family's flight from the Nazis. The correspondence alternates with the 2003 story of Itzak's daughter, Sara, a 41-year-old single professor with a penchant for married lovers who's in the process of adopting a war-refugee child. This milestone, coupled with Sara's chance encounter with a woman who knows more about Sara's family history than Sara does, compels Sara to look into her family's hidden past: did Itzak abandon a sickly mother to pursue his own freedom, and what was the fate of Itzak's father? Redel (Loverboy) offers a welcome and fresh perspective on the well-trod subject of the Holocaust, and though Sara can grate (she acknowledges early on that she sounds "like someone on a moral high horse"), young Itzak's joie de vivre perfectly counterbalances her self-importance. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Do you really want to uncover those family secrets and lies? At 41, Sara, an academic in Manhattan, registers with an international adoption agency, and she is required to provide her family history. She knows her loving, widowed father, Richard, came to the U.S. as a Holocaust refugee in the 1940s, but he does not talk about it. What is he holding back? Part of the answer comes in his alternating narrative as Itzak Lejdel, 17, on board a Portuguese refugee ship in 1940. He writes letters to Eleanor Roosevelt, begging her to help him get a visa, talking about family, movies, girls, and about the threat of being refused entry and sent back to Nazi-occupied Europe. The alternating narratives are sometimes distracting, but as the family mystery builds to a climax, the revelations of love, guilt, betrayal, loss, and denial are haunting. As is the realization that "there is so much now Sarah knows she doesn't know." And doesn't want to know. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First edition. edition (March 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582433666
• ISBN-13: 978-1582433660
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,005,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Border of Truth, Indeed, May 12, 2007

By 

Ursiform (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Border of Truth: A Novel (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book, and will recommend it, but with some reservation.

The story is a juxtaposition of two threads: The first is a series of letter written--but not sent--to Eleanor Roosevelt by a teenage refugee on a ship off Virgina from which he hoped to gain entry to the US in 1940. The second is a third person account of his daughter's attempts to penetrate her father's past to provide a family story in anticipation of adopting a daughter forty-three years later. The letters progressively reveal more of the "truth", while in the daughter's story she slowly ferrets out the same facts.

So far, so good. The interplay and pacing of the two parts is excellent, and the general approach works. Only some details bother me. The letters become more adolescent in the middle of the story, although that might be argued to be understandable in terms of the stress the boy was under. Some of the daughter's actions are harder to accept. Professor about to adopt a baby finds happiness with the furniture repair man? Well ...

Ultimately it was a good story, but I finished it not understanding either the father or daughter. The author never provided a sufficiently compelling psychology of either of her protagonists to answer the question "why?". It would have been less of a problem had the novel been less ambitious and the author obviously less talented, but I'm left with the feeling that Redel should be capable of more.

I do think she's an author to watch.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary novel, April 22, 2007

By 

Melinda Fine "melindafine" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Border of Truth: A Novel (Hardcover)

I loved this book. There are so many different layers of stories here - stories one tells one's loved ones, stories one tells the public, stories one tells oneself, stories one tells one's reader - and there are so many different ways these stories are told - through letters, conversation, translation, and more. Redel weaves different narratives together seamlessly, getting us caught up in the emotional truth of each one even as we learn, bit by bit, that things are not at all what they seem.

There are many ways we learn about big historical events. While this author obviously fictionalizes characters and events on this ship's journey, her characters help us understand how people make sense of what becomes history in their every day lives, and the enduring psychological imprint historical events leave on us - and our children.

A beautiful, haunting, and deeply engrossing read!

Melinda Fine, Ed.D.

New York University

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Novel!, May 27, 2007

By 

Michael D. Weinstein - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Border of Truth: A Novel (Hardcover)

One of those rare stories, beautifully written and totally absorbing. What do we really know about our parents, and choices they faced before we were born, in a different world? Victoria Redel's novel works on mulitiple levels, her characters are vibrant and alive. I can't wait for her next book!