Deborah Levy- Bertherat has written this short but fascinating story. It has been translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. What a wonderful story of a great uncle who travels around the world and writes adventure stories for children. Great-uncle Daniel is the life of the kids table at family holiday meals. All the children in the family are reading his books and following the heroic journeys of Peter Ashley-Mill, in the Black Insignia series. All the children except Helene. She never liked the books as a child. She also was very critical of her uncle, who wrote under the pen name H.R. Sanders. Now she is living in the upstairs apartment owned by Great- uncle Daniel Roche or is it Daniel Ascher?
Helene meets a fellow student, Guillaume who is quite enthusiastic about the Black Insignia series of books and thrilled to meet the author. Guillaume can quote from the books. He encourages Helene to read the books and they discuss them in detail. As Helene gets to know her uncle better she starts to see similarities between him and his character. She also begins to question the memories of her childhood when Uncle Daniel would come to visit and the stories she heard at home about his childhood.
When a postcard he sends her from one of his trips turns out to be false, she starts to search for her uncle and uncover his past. This book takes a very subtle approach to the Holocaust and the Jews escape or capture from Germany. Without too much detail of the atrocities of war this beautiful story makes clear what happened to Jewish families and how some people were able to escape while others were not. The book also shows how their war experience can affect them for the rest of their life.
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