The Puzzle King (38 page)

What else didn’t I know?

The more I dug, the more I learned about the heroic efforts of the people who helped my parents escape from Germany. My novel,
The Puzzle King
, is based on those truths. All of that family was gone (or so I thought), which is why I chose to tell their story as fiction. In the novel, Morris (whom I call Simon) and Flora (she got to keep her name) have no children, and his family is lost in Vilna. In real life, they had three children, and his brothers and mother did come here from Lithuania.

The novel takes place between 1892 and 1936 in New York and a small town in Germany. I tried to show the burgeoning anti-Semitism on both sides of the ocean and the intransigence of German Jews who refused to comprehend what was happening to them.

Another thing I borrowed from real life were the characters of Edith and Werner. Edith is based very closely on my mother, and Werner, on my father. My parents got married in a grand Byzantine synagogue in Kaiserslautern, Germany, on September 22, 1936. Theirs was the last wedding in that temple; shortly afterward, the Nazis burned it to the ground. I have often tried to
picture the expression on my father’s face as my mother walked down the aisle, and wondered if my mother cried when he slipped the ring on her finger. In researching this book, I found a German Web site about synagogues destroyed during the war. Remarkably, this Web site re-created that synagogue in Kaiserslautern and provided a virtual re-creation of its interior. Using this information, I wrote a scene in which I tried to re-create my parents’ wedding. When I finished, I felt not only that I’d been at the wedding but that I had visited my parents, who have been gone for so many years now. Writing has its transcendent moments; this was one of them.

Three weeks after the book was published, I received an e-mail from one of Morris Einson’s granddaughters, who happened to live two hours from me. When we got together for coffee, she brought with her an envelope of mementos her mother had left behind. There were old magazine clips, a handwritten letter from Flora, and, most poignantly, a letter from Morris Einson’s mother to her children from just before her death, in which she writes: “I want my entrance into the life hereafter to be as simple and as plain as my entire life has been … I shall not rest comfortably with a big stone over my head—please give me no such headaches.” She concludes by saying, “I also ask of you to carry on the work I have started and have tried so hard to uphold. Help the poor! And you will be comforted.” I was gratified to discover that my fictionalized character turned out to have the same moral compass and generous nature as Morris’s real-life mother, Fanny Einson.

Since then, I have heard from other people to whom I am either distantly related or whose families were brought to this
country by Flora and Morris Einson. A stranger sent me a box of papers she’d bought at an antique store that had some of Flora’s old belongings in it.

I wrote
The Puzzle King
in order to separate the truth from the mythology of my family. The distinctions are clearer now, and many pieces have fallen into place. But does anyone ever solve the complete puzzle of her own life?

Never.

Any good reporter could tell you that.

Q. Your past two novels,
The Orange Blossom Special
and
Swim to Me
, were set in Florida.
The Puzzle King
is a historical novel that takes place in New York and Kaiserslautern, a small town in Germany. What made you leave Florida?

A. The story of
The Puzzle King
has been kicking around most of my life. It’s based on the history and mythology of my family. My parents were German Jews who narrowly escaped Hitler through the heroic efforts of my great-aunt and my great-uncle. He, we were raised to believe, had invented the game of Monopoly.

Q. How much of the family mythology turned out to be true?

A. The escape part is true. But my great-uncle Morris Einson (Simon Phelps in the novel) did not invent Monopoly. Turns out he figured out how to make jigsaw puzzles out of paper. Until then they were always made of wood and were prohibitively costly. They became a real craze, and he made a fortune.

Q. How did you find out about him?

A. Three ways. First I found his obituary in the
New York Times
. The obit said he had seventy-five patents. So the second thing I did was dig up all of his patents. He was a fine and meticulous graphic artist and had devised ways to make the first robot out of cardboard and how to use face-masks as a means of advertising. I used both of these examples in the book. The third thing I did was get in touch with Anne D. Williams, who is one of America’s experts on jigsaw puzzles. She very generously sent me some papers about my great-uncle that had been published in trade journals.

Q. How much of the novel is based on fact?

A. In real life, my great-uncle did marry a beautiful young woman named Flora who had come to America from Germany as a young girl. I made up most of her family in Germany and America, and I made up his missing family in Lithuania. But the ending of the book is true, and two of the main characters are based on my parents. The time period of the novel, 1892 to 1936, is the span of Morris Einson’s life in America. The chronology of the story leading up to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews in Germany is also true.

Q. What else did you borrow from real life?

A. In 1897 there was a world heavyweight championship boxing match between James Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons. Morris Einson drew the famous knockout punch in chalk on the sidewalk. Because there was no TV or radio then, it was the only
way people could see what happened. Someone saw that drawing on the sidewalk and hired him to work in the window display business.

Q. This book is about the time leading up to the Holocaust. What would you like people to take away from your novel?

A. I wanted to depict the anti-Semitism on both sides of the ocean. In America, we see the growing fear and obsession about what’s happening in Europe, and in Germany we witness the intransigence of German Jews who believed they were Germans first and refused to comprehend what was about to happen to them.

I also hope to shed light on people like Morris and Flora Einson who used their money, power, and courage to get hundreds of people out of Germany and ensure a future for the generations who came after.

Q. Are you obsessed with crosses the way Seema is in the novel?

A. Not really, though I’ve always been impressed by the beauty and simplicity of their design. So much in Seema’s life was fleeting and belonged to other people. I felt she needed something of her own to hold onto. Crosses seemed the perfect thing.

Q. You wrote a memoir in 2002 called
Nothing to Fall Back On
, yet you barely mentioned this part of your history in the book. Were you hiding it or did you just not know about it then?

A. Growing up, I hated being “different.” My parents had accents, our house was crammed with dark and heavy European
furniture, and my parents very much kept to themselves and their German Jewish friends. Consequently, I set out to be as American as possible. I became a majorette, was voted “The All American Girl” for our high school yearbook, and only went out with boys named Hunter or Todd. By the time my memoir came out, both of my parents had passed away. I began reading more about the Holocaust and about World War II and tried to imagine what it was like for them, newlyweds in their early twenties, to be uprooted to a new country with no money and no future. Foolishly, I had never interviewed them about their past, so I began researching to try and put it together on my own.

Q. Aside from historical facts, what’s the most significant thing you learned from writing
The Puzzle King
?

A. My memoir,
Nothing to Fall Back On
, was about the life I lead as a magazine editor in New York. Professionally, it was glamorous and exciting; privately, my world was falling apart. In a run of bad luck I had a serious car accident; my house burned down; I had emergency surgery; my marriage broke up precipitously; I got breast cancer; and my parents passed away. My intent in writing the memoir was, partly, to exorcise some bad memories. After I wrote
The Puzzle King
, I realized that I came from people who had endured so much more than I could imagine. And while I don’t want to minimize my string of bad luck, it felt trivial compared with the life-threatening and terrifying years they had all lived before me. It certainly renewed my respect for them and gave me strength, knowing that this was my legacy.

Q. Which scene was the most difficult for you to write?

A. Without a doubt, the final scene. I’ll say no more about it other than when I wrote it, I was giving a speech out of town. I was staying in a B&B with no heat. The morning of the speech, it was so cold and rainy outside that the only warm place to be was in bed. I sat under the covers and wrote the entire last scene. Had the weather been milder that morning, I think that scene might have been less wrenching.

1. Talk about what it was like for nine-year-old Simon Phelps—or what it would be like for any young child—to leave his family and immigrate to a land on the opposite side of the world. Talk also about the reasons Simon was sent away by his mother. What was he leaving behind, and what did she hope for him?

2. Consider Flora’s and Seema’s experiences in immigrating: how similar were theirs to Simon’s?

3. In what ways are Flora and Seema different from each other? Why does Seema form a relationship with an American who evinces anti-Semitism?

4. Simon and Flora have differing personalities: he is artistic and serious—intense in his convictions; she is more lighthearted and conventional. What makes their marriage work?

5. When the two sisters return to Germany on their mother’s death, they have completely different reactions to their country. Why does Germany draw Seema and not Flora? What is life like for their younger sister, Margot, in post–World War I Germany?

6. Why did so many German Jews choose not to leave Europe at the onset of the Nazi takeover? Why did they not comprehend what was happening in their country? Was it lack of foresight or simply part of human nature?

7. Discuss what motivates the heroism on the part of Simon and Flora as they travel to Germany in 1936 in an attempt to save the lives of family members.

8. What other books have you read about either the immigrant experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries or the experience of European Jews during the Holocaust? Does your knowledge from any of those works have bearing on your reading or understanding of
The Puzzle King
?

9. Has anyone from your family immigrated to the United States? If so, compare their experience to Flora’s and Simon’s.

10. Discuss whether you think it’s possible for people who immigrate to this country these days to achieve the kind of success Simon did.

11. In the novel, Simon in particular is sensitive about the growing and far-reaching anti-Semitism around him. How does the
presence of racial or ethnic prejudice in our country today compare with what you read in
The Puzzle King?

12. Seema and Edith are drawn to one another. What is it that bonds them and makes them trust one another?

13. What do you imagine happened to Seema after the book ended? What was her life like in Germany and did she and Karl stay together? Did they survive? If so, how and why?

14. What gave Flora the courage and energy to do what she did after Simon’s death? How did she change during the course of the book?

15. Seema finds comfort in crosses, even though they have no religious significance to her. What about them attracted and reassured her?

16. In her lifetime, after the war, would Flora have ever returned to Germany? What would her life in the United States have been like?

Betsy Carter is the author of
Swim to Me
and
The Orange Blossom Special
. Her memoir,
Nothing to Fall Back On
, was a national bestseller. She is a contributing editor for
O: The Oprah Magazine
and writes for
Good Housekeeping, New York
, and
AARP
, among others. Carter formerly served as an editor of
Esquire, Newsweek
, and
Harper’s Bazaar
and was the founding editor of
New York Woman
. She lives in New York City.

A Blessing on the Moon
, a novel by Joseph Skibell

Hailed by the
New York Times
as “confirmation that no subject lies beyond the grasp of a gifted, committed imagination,” this highly acclaimed novel is a magical tale about the Holocaust—a fable inspired by fact. Not since Art Spiegelman’s
Maus
has a work so powerfully evoked one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century with such daring originality.