”…a gripping saga backed by historical precedent and individual lives alike.” –Midwest Book Review
Two distinct voices emerge: one, a jaded ex-cop, the other, an aging, but spirited German lady, telling her story of love, war, ethics, and redemption.
Germany, 1930s. In the peaceful village of Dachau, Ariana lives with her family, ordinary German citizens, during the Third Reich. Ariana and … Ariana lives with her family, ordinary German citizens, during the Third Reich. Ariana and her sister, Renate, come of age amidst the growing horrors.
Munich, 2012. Hard-nosed ex-cop, Jack Bailey, is determined to locate Ariana Schröder, who wrote a WWII wartime love letter to his father decades ago. Jack and his brother think the letter may hold the key to his past drunken abusiveness.
Jack’s friend, Sherk, invites him to visit his native Munich, where Jack learns more than he bargained for, including a shocking disclosure. Back in Chicago, should he reveal family secrets and put his father to rest? From the Dachau death train to the camp’s liberation by the Americans, a tale unfolds, connecting two people in an unforgettable, ever-changing story.
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Thought provoking, Scary if it should ever repeat.
A Letter From Munich (Jack Bailey #3) by Meg Lelvis is historical fiction looking back from 2012 through memory and journal to Germany during and after World War 2. Characters become complex as the storyline progresses, descriptions living in war torn Germany and the horrors of death trains were graphic as the plot unfolds. This was an interesting and absorbing read.
I enjoyed the joint effort of Jack and his German born friend to discover the meaning behind a letter and how love , loss and discovery can resolve many issues in the Bailey family.
184 pages
4 stars
This story is told in two timelines: 1930’s Germany and the present.
At the beginning of this book the character Jack has a ‘tude. Although to be fair the ex-cop has plenty to about which to have a chip on his shoulder.
He and his former partner and now friend Sherk travel to Germany to visit Sherk’s family. Jack has another motive for going, however, and waits until they get there to spring it on Sherk. He has found a letter in his now deceased father’s things and Jack and his brother Tommy want to know who sent it. Written in a feminine hand, and partly in English and partly in German, it is an intriguing find.
Sherk and Jack set out to find the woman named Ariana. Who they discover is her sister Renate. Renate is a spry, energetic woman who takes them to visit her sister. Sadly, she is suffering from dementia.
Over several days, Renate tells Ariana and Jack’s father’s story. She gives Jack a journal written by his fsther at Ariana’s insistence. Jack reads about their discovery of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. His father describes the horrors he saw and experienced.
Jack begins to understand why perhaps his father was a mean drunk.
But there is more to the diary. There is also a post script written by Ariana.
Well written and plotted, as are all of Ms. Lelvis’ books, this novel is entrancing and fascinating. I didn’t like Jack at first. I though he was rude to his friend and couldn’t understand why Sherk would put up with his behavior. Ms. Lelvis has a talent for writing and I hope she keeps it up. She tells a very good story.
I want to thank NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for forwarding to me a copy of this very good book for me to read, enjoy and review.
WWII books tell a lot about what people went through.
Jack is an angry, ignorant, Ugly American who abuses others within his family and social circle.
This story was interesting. The main character was way to rude and verbally abusive to the friend who was always helpful and kind. It found the behavior out of place for the story line.
It’s well written and interesting. I heartily disliked the main character so much that I kept telling myself I wouldn’t continue reading…but the story took over and I couldn’t stop reading. The violence could be less graphic and still get the horror across.
Because this was a sequel, I was more interested in the back story than the one being told here.
Two brothers in Chicago come across a letter buried in their late alcoholic, abusive fathers’ WWII memorabilia. The romantically-worded letter from 1946 points to him having had an affair with the female author of the letter while in Germany. One brother goes to Germany to try and find her and get the whole story. He manages to do that, and could finally attribute his father’s behavior to having been one of the first to walk through the doors of Dachau in the liberation. He finds another ghost from his father’s past while talking to the woman’s sister. He wrestles with whether to tell other family members or not: “What is the boundary between a person’s right to the truth and the right to keep painful secrets?”
At any rate, I really didn’t like the man at all, and having an unlikeable protagonist is not especially pleasant reading. At a restaurant in Germany, a child is making a fuss at a nearby table. He says. “Last thing I want to put up with are brats yakking…“Jeez, sounds like a wounded hyena, and he ain’t laughing,” Besides frequent uses of “ain’t”, he also speaks with words like dunno, grub, wanna, nah, and gotta, and says things like, “You’re fulla’ shit, man.” (This is a 50’s something former Chicago cop of Irish heritage). On top of his ignorant and rude speech, he shows little appreciation for his German-speaking former partner who had no idea this trip to see his extended family in Germany was going to turn him seeing little of his family and doing a lot of grunt work to help out this obnoxious “friend.”
It was an OK read, but just OK. The book is copyrighted 2020, and the lead character notes, ““I read where a good many citizens said [the Holocaust] didn’t happen. Even with photos of bodies, it wasn’t proof. They claimed that Hitler had nothing to do with it. The violence was done by thugs, not him. One guy said that it was wrong, if it happened, but he wasn’t convinced it happened.” The man ponders, “Could something like the Third Reich happen again? In America?” A nice reflection on the dangers we face from the likes of Q-Anon!
The narrator reads too fast and comes across monotone. I had a very hard time getting through it.
It was informative about the events of the time and the place. I am glad that I read it. It was also true to the facts and thoughts of the time that I experienced also.
Not that good, rather predictable. Glad I borrowed it from the library and didn’t buy it
Overall Rating = 4.08
Storyline & Concept = 3.75
Writing & Delivery = 4
Editorial = 4.5
A Letter from Munich, set mostly in Germany, both in present time and during World War II, tells the story of a love affair between an American soldier and a young German woman during the war. Instigated by the discovery of a decades-old letter, the main character, Jack Bailey, a hardened ex-cop, searches for the source of the letter and an understanding of his father’s cruel nature.
Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and the author did extensive research into the atrocities of WWII Germany. The mindset, culture, and historical sites of both modern-day and wartime Germany are deftly woven into the plot. Jack, the main character, is rude and unlikable, which can be off-putting at times, but the author explains his attitude by hinting at the damage he had suffered from past experiences, which are detailed in previous novels. The writing is very well done, and the historical sections, as related by an aging German woman, are captivating and are the highlights of this novel.
Sublime Line: “A Letter from Munich takes a fascinating plunge into World War II Germany as Jack Bailey returns in this novel to search for the writer of a decades-old love letter.”
Very shallow book.
good read
Can a letter change your life?
Jack and Tommy were going through their late father’s possessions when they found a letter to him from a German woman. It was sent to him just after the war ended.
Jack decides to go to Germany and find the lady that had written the letter in hopes he would find out about his father’s time in the war.
What he finds not only changes how he thinks about his father, but how he thinks of the war and the German people. He finds the woman that wrote the letter, although she now has lost most of her memory. He also meets her sister who has a journal his father wrote during the war. She tells him her sister’s story during the war and gives him his father’s journal.
He finds out information which will change his life. It opens his eyes to what his father saw during the war that caused him to become a drunk and to have nightmares. He understands his father as he never did before.
He goes home to his brother Tommy and his sister Jennifer and shares what he learned and shared the journal with them.
It is a tragic story of a German family during the war, and a young soldier sent to liberate Dachau the Nazi concentration camp. The sites he saw would haunt the soldier the rest of his life. In his nightmares he remembers the young German girl he once knew. He could never explain to his family and never talked to them of the war. He became a bitter drunk and took it out on his sons. They never understood him until they read his journal.
The book was interesting to read, a page turner for me. I enjoyed the description of the German cities Dachau and Munich. The story that was told was interesting to read in a historical sense, but the feelings and the communications with the characters involved made the story.
I would recommend this book, it was a good read.
Thanks to Meg Lelvis, Black Rose Writing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of the book for an honest review.