The Lost Wife

July 18, 2011
Star-crossed lovers are separated during WWII in Richman's heart-wrenching fourth novel. Josef and Lenka meet as students in Prague in 1936 and fall instantly in love. Three years later, with Nazis crossing the border, they rush to marry, but circumstances then force them apart. Lenka remains in Europe, and Josef flees to America. For 61 years, each believes the other dead until they meet by chance at the wedding of their grandchildren, leading them to reflect on the past and the separate lives they've led: Josef ended up in New York, becoming a successful obstetrician because he was "tired of being haunted by death." Lenka wasn't so lucky. She's sent to a work camp, where her artistic talents connect her to "an underground network of painters illustrating the atrocities" of the Jewish ghettos. And then she's sent to, and survives, Auschwitz. Richman (The Last Van Gogh) once again finds inspiration in art, adding evocative details to a swiftly moving and emotionally charged plot. Richman's incremental descent into the horrors of the Holocaust lends enormous power to Lenka's experience and makes her reunion with Josef all the more poignant. Though the framing device of the decades-long separation can be cloying, this is a genuinely moving portrait.

September 1, 2011
Holocaust novels rarely begin with a happy ending, but Richman's starts with what could be the last chapter. Josef and Lenka grow up comfortably in prewar Prague, entering adulthood as Nazi Germany rises to power. They marry, then are separated by the war when Josef's family gains passage to America, and Lenka stays behind until her parents can leave as well. Eventually, each thinks the other is dead, as their stories unfold in alternating chapters. Lenka's family is transported to Terezin, a ghetto near Prague with concentration-camp-like privations and danger. An art student, she is assigned to create commercial art for the Nazis, while an underground group works to document and expose the reality of their lives. In America, Josef remarries and starts a new life, but never forgets the past. Lenka survives, marries an American soldier, and begins life again. Tragedy and hope, love and loss, and the strength to endure are expressed through Richman's graceful writing and powerful characters, many based on actual Holocaust victims and survivors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)