A Reunion of Ghosts

..the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations..

A Reunion of Ghosts is a story that seems to be totally based on this premise.


Judith Claire Mitchell, author of A Reunion of Ghosts deserves so much credit for the clever concept she has created for this book.  Three sisters living in current day New York City have spent their lives grappling with the inheritance of family guilt.  Their Great Grandfather was Lenz Alter, who helped discover Zyklon gas which is later developed into Zyklon B gas used in the extermination of people during World War II.  A Jewish scientist whose work helped in the alienation of his people.  In each generation before them someone has committed suicide.  It is a heavy burden of family guilt they carry with them through life.

This story carries through out many themes for discussion and thought.  Is there a collective guilt if an ancestor of yours helped the Holocaust with his scientific discoveries?  Is there any glory in suicide?  Or is there anything positive in being able to control your destiny by picking the time you want to die instead of living life and letting it take its natural course?

Mitchell mixes a fictional family of characters with real people who lived and worked in Germany in the years leading up to the Great War.  Lenz Alter, whose name translates to spring and old age, is part of the group of scientific geniuses of their day.  Fictional characters, Lenz and his wife Iris are friends with the Einsteins, Albert and Mileva.  They are living and working with the likes of Max Planck, Otto Hahn, and Lise Mietner.  

Another interesting issue brought up in the story is the life of women during the 1930s.   Most women married and stayed home while their husbands went to work. Women like Lise Mietner gave up family life for their careers.  Mitchell shows us the real unhappy marriage of Albert and Mileva Einstein and of Lenz and Iris Alter.  Mileva and Iris could have been successful scientists in their own right. They had given up their studies and research when they married.  As they watch their husbands succeed along with Marie and Pierre Curie they ruminate on how they have been left behind and left out.  They feel they are the great women behind the recognized successful men.  "I'm as responsible for special relativity as Albert," Mileva says..."We are Germany's Curies, Albert and I. It's just that no one is allowed to know it."

Iris agrees that she understands every aspect of Lenz's work. She has edited his papers and typed his manuscript.  She has made suggestions along the way.  Mileva doesn't understand Iris being so calm, "I don't see how you can be so blase about it.  Our own husbands.  They took our careers.  They stood in our light."

So the point is raised numerous times through the book, does the knowledge of the scientist who creates something that can be used for good, in this fertilizer, and is then redeveloped to be used for evil by someone else, Zyklon B, determine his guilt?  Then to take it to the next logical step, the patriot asks, "..how is being dead different if it's caused by chlorine gas rather than by flying pieces of metal?'     But the sisters also learn that their great grandfather was at the Battle of Ypes, during World War One and actually helped release the fumes.  Mitchell writes, "it it like discovering the unexpurgated Brothers Grimm version of a fairy tale you've known only as a Disney cartoon.  You thought the wicked step-sister only tried to squeeze her big fat feet into the delicate slipper?  Oh no- not so.  She actually cut off her toes to manage it."

Plod through all the details and follow along with the tale to the very end for a satisfying conclusion. This is a very interesting story that will keep you thinking and possibly changing your opinion all the way to the end.