Hello, gentle readers. It’s time for another giveaway, and I suspect and believe that this one will be right up your street. It is extremely romantic and fascinating:

THE PRIZE: We have five autographed copies of PAPER LOVE to give away! Let Barnes & Noble tell you more:

Years after her grandfather’s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients A?G.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel.   Her grandfather’s lover who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria.

Valy’s name wasn’t unknown to her—Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. “She was your grandfather’s true love,” her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy’s story. They revealed a woman desperate to escape and  clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom.

Obsessed with Valy’s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entire world of other people searching for the same woman. On in the course of  discovering  Valy’s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.

THE TASK: I shall be picking the winner at random, but please comment and tell us the book you’d take with you if you had to flee (for whatever reason) and could bring but one.

THE RULES: All entries must be posted in the comments of this post by 9 p.m. Pacific time on Monday. (US and Canada residents only, unfortunately.) FYI, if this is the first time you’ve commented here, (a) I’m very glad you’re here and (b) the system will automatically kick you into comment moderation, but don’t worry, I will rescue you.

 

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