I am always wondering if I will find some old letter or diary that will give me a connection to my past or a world I am connected to that I never knew existed. How exciting it seems it might be when cleaning out your parents home, to find some old memories that will give you incite into who your parents were before they were those old grown-ups who told you what to do.
Or when we were renovating our house, I hoped I would find some old papers hidden in the attic or a wall that would lead to someone's personal lost story. Jillian Cantor has found a way to write a wonderful sweet and historic story of the Holocaust and one family's journey out of Austria woven from a stamp collection.
Going back and forth between 1938 and 1989, Cantor intersperses two stories. The love story of Kristoff, a young apprentice to the famous stamp Jewish stamp engraver, and his daughter Elena.
When the war reaches their small town and starts to affect their lives, Kristoff and Elena must make some very dangerous and important decisions. While in 1989, Katie Nelson is cleaning out her father's house, after putting him a nursing home. He is suffering from a failing memory. Katie brings his stamp collection to Benjamin, a stamp appraiser, to find out if her father really had ever found the "gem" he was searching for. Thus starts the journey that takes Benjamin and Katie across the world to find out the story behind an Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter in her dad's collection.
This is a new and beautiful way to learn about another piece of the history of the Second World War. It also bring us to the contemporary historic bringing down of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of East and West Germany.
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