The Living and the Lost
A Novel
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A gripping story of resilience, love, and forgiveness as a young German Jewish woman returns to post-WWII Berlin to confront her past and unexpected future.
"A deeply satisfying and truly adult novel." —Margot Livesey, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
Millie (Meike) Mosbach and her brother David escape to America just before Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister behind in Berlin. Millie attends Bryn Mawr on a special scholarship for non-Aryan German girls and finds work at a magazine in Philadelphia, while David enlists in the army and is posted to the top-secret Camp Ritchie in Maryland.
Now, they are both back in their former hometown, haunted by ghosts and hoping against hope to find their family. Millie works in an office rooting out dedicated Nazis from publishing, consumed with rage at her former country and its citizens. David helps displaced persons build new lives, while hiding his more radical nighttime activities from his sister. They both grapple with guilt at their own good fortune, except for Millie's boss, Major Harry Sutton, who seems too eager to be fair to the Germans.
In bombed-out Berlin, where drunken soldiers brawl, spies ply their trade, and unrepentant Nazis scheme to rise again, Millie must come to terms with a decision she made as a girl in a moment of crisis, and with the enigmatic Major Sutton who understands her demons. Atmospheric and page-turning, The Living and the Lost is a story of survival, forgiveness, and love in the aftermath of war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this exquisite piece of historical fiction, Feldman (Paris Never Leaves You) explores post-WWII Germany as viewed by a Jewish woman who escaped as a child. Meike "Millie" Mosbach fled Germany at 16 in 1938 with her younger brother, David. During the war, the two began new lives in the U.S. She studied at Bryn Mawr and began a career in magazine publishing, while he enlisted in the Army and underwent intelligence training. In late 1945, both return to Berlin, where Millie helps the Army root out former Nazis from the publishing industry and David helps rescue displaced persons. Meanwhile, Millie searches for their parents and younger sister, Sarah, who were unable to secure passage out of the country. Millie returned with a black-and-white view of the world—Germans bad, Americans good—and Feldman does a good job tracking her education of the gray area ("You lost family to the Nazis. I lost family to both sides," a German woman tells her). This will stay with readers long after the final page is turned.
