The Border of Truth: A Novel
In 1940, Itzak Lejdel, a teenage Jewish refugee from Brussels being  held aboard a ship docked in Virginia, is one of 86 passengers whose visas have  been rejected and are about to be returned to Nazi-occupied Europe. Itzak  writes a series of pleas to Eleanor Roosevelt to intervene, filling his letters  with colorful rumors about fellow passengers, endearing details about the  movies he loves and his adolescent crushes, as well as harrowing tales about  his family's flight from the Nazis. The correspondence alternates with the 2003  story of Itzak's daughter, Sara, a 41-year-old single professor with a penchant  for married lovers who's in the process of adopting a war-refugee child. This  milestone, coupled with Sara's chance encounter with a woman who knows more  about Sara's family history than Sara does, compels Sara to look into her  family's hidden past: did Itzak abandon a sickly mother to pursue his own  freedom, and what was the fate of Itzak's father? Redel (Loverboy) offers a welcome and fresh perspective on  the well-trod subject of the Holocaust, and though Sara can grate (she  acknowledges early on that she sounds "like someone on a moral high horse"),  young Itzak's joie de vivre perfectly counterbalances her self-importance.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.