The Border of \t\t Truth

In 1940, Itzak Lejdel, a teenage Jewish refugee from Brussels being \t\t held aboard a ship docked in Virginia, is one of 86 passengers whose visas have \t\t been rejected and are about to be returned to Nazi-occupied Europe. Itzak \t\t writes a series of pleas to Eleanor Roosevelt to intervene, filling his letters \t\t with colorful rumors about fellow passengers, endearing details about the \t\t movies he loves and his adolescent crushes, as well as harrowing tales about \t\t his family's flight from the Nazis. The correspondence alternates with the 2003 \t\t story of Itzak's daughter, Sara, a 41-year-old single professor with a penchant \t\t for married lovers who's in the process of adopting a war-refugee child. This \t\t milestone, coupled with Sara's chance encounter with a woman who knows more \t\t about Sara's family history than Sara does, compels Sara to look into her \t\t family's hidden past: did Itzak abandon a sickly mother to pursue his own \t\t freedom, and what was the fate of Itzak's father? Redel (Loverboy) offers a welcome and fresh perspective on \t\t the well-trod subject of the Holocaust, and though Sara can grate (she \t\t acknowledges early on that she sounds "like someone on a moral high horse"), \t\t young Itzak's joie de vivre perfectly counterbalances her self-importance. \t\t (Apr.)