While exploring the catalog of Unbridled Books, the independent publisher I mentioned in an earlier post, I came across some promising books. This one is called Mohr and it's by Frederick Reuss. (I actually came across about six books that look promising, but this one is particularly unusual and engaging.)
Here's what the publisher says about it:
"Frederick Reuss has created a love story of historic proportions. Mohr: A Novel is about a man and wife whose life together is marked irreparably by a deeply troubled and world-testing era.
"With the sort of enthralling narrative step that always marks his work, Reuss allows their story to rise from a cache of photographs he uncovered in Germany—photographs from the 1920s and ’30s of the exiled Jewish playwright and novelist Max Mohr; Käthe, the beautiful wife he left behind; and Eva, their daughter, who would live through it all but would never really understand what had happened.
"The interplay between Reuss’s revealing prose and the real faces in nearly 50 photographs offers a reading experience that may be unprecedented in novels. From the first paragraph and that first creased image, which Eva may have taken, of the Mohrs at their table in Germany just before Max walked away from their lives, this beautiful and powerful novel works as deeply on the reader as a family photo album."
If that doesn't snag you nothing will. I'm eager to see those photos and discover how Reuss has used them to create this rich fictional world. Fortunately, considering the condition the book budget is in these days, the library has the book. I've requested it and I'll report in later to let you know what I think.
Max Mohr, by the way, was the uncle of the author's grandfather. His great-grand uncle? His uncle thrice removed?
