The Lost Letter

Jillian Cantor's The Lost Letter arrived in my e-mail box on the day before I decided I wasn't going to finish my Jo Nesbo book, Police. One of the many newsletters that I get with book recommendations suggested The Lost Letter. I love reading letters and books about letters, I'm interested in Holocaust novels, so I requested it. Months ago.

The Lost Letter isn't truly a lost letter. The letter isn't truly lost. It was simply unsent at the time it was written (during Hitler's occupation of Austria) and recently discovered by Katie Lawrence in 1989.

Katie's father, Ted, was a stamp collector for all of Katie's life. As Katie was growing up, Sunday mornings were spent going to flea markets looking out for "a real gem" of a stamp. A few months prior to where the novel begins, Katie has had to put her father into a memory care home because of his advancing dementia. Ted gives Katie his stamp collection. His very large stamp collection.

Not knowing anything about stamps after a lifetime of not understanding her father's fascination with stamps, Katie turns to a stamp expert, Benjamin, to appraise the collection. When Benjamin phones Katie to share something interesting he's found, she hopes that it will be a gem for her father. It was not. But it fuels Katie's interest in stamp collecting, her father's life before he was her father, and the lives of her mother's parents who were born in Germany but came to the US before Germany became a really dangerous place for Jews.

The Lost Letter is very different from other Holocaust novels that I've read and that's what I really appreciated about it. I learned about stamp engraving, how stamp engraving was used by the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Austria, and things about the Resistance that I hadn't known before. I gave it 4 stars on goodreads because of the way Cantor weaved this interesting story, alternating between 1930s Austria and 1980s California (at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall). What held me back from giving this novel 5 stars was the fact that I didn't feel a connection to the characters and the "sad parts" of the story didn't make me cry. I didn't sense the characters being emotionally vested in the discoveries that Katie makes about her own personal history. All the characters seemed to take each new discovery rather matter-of-factly. I wanted that punch of emotion. I think I needed that tug to my heart. That just wasn't there.

Would I recommend The Lost Letter? Yes, I would. It would probably make a good book club selection as there is lots that could be discussed.