A mysterious postcard…

The Postcard begins with a mystery.

In 2003, a postcard is delivered to the Paris home of Lélia Picabia, a chain-smoking college professor. A vintage photo of the Opéra Garnier is on the front. Four names are handwritten on the back: Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, and Jacques, all relatives who were killed at Auschwitz. The names are written in ballpoint pen. The stamp is upside down. There is no return address.

Lélia puts the postcard in a box.

Years later, Lélia’s daughter Anne–the novel’s narrator, who we suspect is very much like its author, Anne Berest–is compelled to discover who sent the postcard and why. She persuades her mother–a skilled researcher, storyteller (and my favorite character)–to share what she knows of their family history.

The first part of the book is Lélia’s harrowing and lyrical account. Her grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, flee Russia and journey to Latvia. Then, with their children, Myriam, Noémie, and Jacques, they follow Ephraïm’s parents to pre-state Israel. But believing that Europe holds their future, they make a poorly timed return to Paris.s When the Nazis invade, Noémie and Jacques are picked up in a raid. Their older sister Myriam, Lélia’s mother, escapes by a thread, hidden in the trunk of a car with the artist Marcel Duchamp to cross the border into unoccupied France.

We then experience the war from Myriam’s perspective, with her ensconced in an abandoned cottage, increasingly anxious about her vanished siblings and parents, with a husband she barely knows, whose secret life in part (and only in part) involves missions for the French Resistance.

Then the gears shift, and the detective novel begins. With photos of the postcard on her phone, Anne gathers clues from a private investigator, a graphologist, historians, family members, associates, and friends.

She and Lélia travel across France, digging into archives and questioning strangers, to discover who sent the mysterious postcard and why. Ultimately what they uncover brings them new understanding about their family, their history, and themselves.

The Postcard was a bestseller in France and a finalist for the Goncourt Prize. The newly released English version was translated by Tina Kover.

A trio of other new books, all by bestselling authors

The Golem of Brooklyn , by Adam Mansbach

When Brooklyn art teacher Len Bronstein creates a Golem of pilfered clay and instructions from the internet, he sets loose a revenge-fueled romp through Jewish history. The book is filled with exactly the kind of humor you’d expect from the writer of TheNew York Times bestseller Go the F*ck to Sleep and the award-winning screenplay for the Netflix hit Barry.

Don’t Forget to Write , by Sara Goodman Confino

It’s the ’60s. Twenty-year-old Marilyn Kleinman is discovered making out with the rabbi’s son, in an incident witnessed by her family’s entire Philadelphia congregation. To save her reputation, she’s shipped off to her great-aunt Ada, who turns out to be a straight-talking, Cadillac-driving partner in crime.

The Breakway , by Jennifer Weiner

On a cycling trip from New York City to Niagara Falls, happy-enough Abby Stein encounters an old beau, uncovers things she never knew about her mother, turns strangers into friends, and charts a new path.

Betsy Gomberg reads (and sometimes writes about) Jewish books. She is Spertus Institute’s Director of Marketing and Communications.