The Lost WIfe

Alyson Richman seems to be turning out novels at an amazing speed.  The Lost Wife is a wonderful story, full of historical accuracy of what life was like for Jewish families in Europe leading up to the takeover of Czechoslovakia and then in the concentration camp, Theresien.

Richman talks in an interview about overhearing a woman explaining at the hairdresser that she knew about a man and woman who found each other many years after the war, who though they were married they each thought the other spouse was dead.  Richman who had been working on the idea for a book about an artist living in Theresien camp decided to use this idea as her jumping off point.

What a beautiful story she has written.  The two elderly people meet for the first time in sixty years.
They have both lived long full lives thinking the other had died during the Holocaust. But through it all they never forgot the other.  Richman tells the story of what happened and how they reach their current circumstances with alternating chapters telling the story from each perspective.  The reader sees what happened throughout the war years and how the couple came together and how they ended up apart.

Her historical accuracy and descriptions of being in a concentration camp give the reader a way to really relate to the experiences of many people who lived through that time.  Richman intersperses real people and events that happened in Theresien to give the reader a real understanding of life in that horrific environment.

A wonderful love story and a story that shows that a feeling of strength and determination can have such a strong effect on one's life.  That people who overcame terrible odds, won against the war machine of WWII by having families and bringing new generations of children and grandchildren into the world to carry on their family names.  That brave people risked everything to let the world know what was happening in the camps.