- Mass Market Paperback: 450 pages
- Publisher: Dundurn; 2nd edition (Nov 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1550024744
- ISBN-13: 978-1550024746
- Product Dimensions: 17.9 x 10.8 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #627,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Books in Canada
Despite Find Me Again’s cover notes I was unprepared for the engrossing journey over two centuries on which I was to accompany the author. This is Warsh’s second novel, a sequel to the well regarded To Die in Spring, and once again its central character is Dr. Rebecca Temple.
Rebecca’s husband has been dead eleven months, too short a time for her to reconcile herself to this tragedy and the opening chapters are suitably poignant and melancholy. Her relationship with Sarah, her Mother-in-Law, is somehow stilted and mostly at arms length emotionally. Sarah has justification for her reluctance to commit to a warmer relationship; her experience as a Holocaust survivor in occupied Poland makes her a victim of dark and distressing nightmares. The horrors of the Holocaust are a necessary and integral ingredient of this tale and this aspect is handled with great sensitivity by Warsh.
We are are diverted from Rebecca’s sadness with the arrival of Halina, an old friend of Sarah’s, who has come from Communist Poland to Toronto in the hope of finding a cure for her daughter Natalka’s serious illness. Through these visitors we are introduced to Count Michael Oginski, a larger than life charmer, described with affection by Warsh and John Baron, another Polish émigré, who is the martinet owner of the mining company that the Count now works for in Toronto. The Count tells Rebecca with great enthusiasm of the historical novel that he is writing, which, he claims, will revise current understanding of history and confirm his royal ancestry.
A surprising development soon follows: There is a murder and we are introduced to two mysteries-one set in the late 1970s, the other in the mid 1740s. While Rebecca strives to identify a murderer in Toronto, believing that the Count’s manuscript contains the answer, Warsh transports us through history. We become witnesses to the often-incestuous affairs and political intrigues of the royal courts of Poland, Russia, Saxony and Prussia.
Rebecca, while searching for answers in the Count’s novel, becomes transfixed by the characters and their machinations; there’s plenty of romance, political diplomacy, and at times, plain jostling for better status at court.
Warsh knits the two mysteries together seamlessly, writing convincingly of Europe in the 1740s, ably capturing the nuances of the language of those times. She handles the transition from one story to the other deftly until Dr. Temple, through her sheer determination and courage, presents us with satisfying and believable solutions to both conundrums.
The author, while raised in Toronto, was born in Germany, a child of Holocaust survivors, and has an obvious empathy for those who lived through those events; she has successfully put that understanding to use in this excellent novel.
Desmond McNally (Books in Canada)
Rebecca’s husband has been dead eleven months, too short a time for her to reconcile herself to this tragedy and the opening chapters are suitably poignant and melancholy. Her relationship with Sarah, her Mother-in-Law, is somehow stilted and mostly at arms length emotionally. Sarah has justification for her reluctance to commit to a warmer relationship; her experience as a Holocaust survivor in occupied Poland makes her a victim of dark and distressing nightmares. The horrors of the Holocaust are a necessary and integral ingredient of this tale and this aspect is handled with great sensitivity by Warsh.
We are are diverted from Rebecca’s sadness with the arrival of Halina, an old friend of Sarah’s, who has come from Communist Poland to Toronto in the hope of finding a cure for her daughter Natalka’s serious illness. Through these visitors we are introduced to Count Michael Oginski, a larger than life charmer, described with affection by Warsh and John Baron, another Polish émigré, who is the martinet owner of the mining company that the Count now works for in Toronto. The Count tells Rebecca with great enthusiasm of the historical novel that he is writing, which, he claims, will revise current understanding of history and confirm his royal ancestry.
A surprising development soon follows: There is a murder and we are introduced to two mysteries-one set in the late 1970s, the other in the mid 1740s. While Rebecca strives to identify a murderer in Toronto, believing that the Count’s manuscript contains the answer, Warsh transports us through history. We become witnesses to the often-incestuous affairs and political intrigues of the royal courts of Poland, Russia, Saxony and Prussia.
Rebecca, while searching for answers in the Count’s novel, becomes transfixed by the characters and their machinations; there’s plenty of romance, political diplomacy, and at times, plain jostling for better status at court.
Warsh knits the two mysteries together seamlessly, writing convincingly of Europe in the 1740s, ably capturing the nuances of the language of those times. She handles the transition from one story to the other deftly until Dr. Temple, through her sheer determination and courage, presents us with satisfying and believable solutions to both conundrums.
The author, while raised in Toronto, was born in Germany, a child of Holocaust survivors, and has an obvious empathy for those who lived through those events; she has successfully put that understanding to use in this excellent novel.
Desmond McNally (Books in Canada)
Review
"Find Me Again is a good old-fashioned mystery and a historical novel rolled into one."
Canadian Book Review Annual
"...Warsh writes sensitively about the persecution of the Jews, and she shows convincingly how the actions of the past are not discrete-they have monumental effects on the present and future... In tying the threads of the mystery together, in the conclusion Warsh gives her characters and her readers hope that the positive side of human beings will prevail."
-The Edmonton Journal
"Toronto writer Sylvia Maultash Warsh picked up an Edgar Allan Poe Award. Find Me Again won the award for best paperback original." (Globe and Mail )
"…a fascinating journey throught the 18th century world of a young princess through the horror of Nazi Poland and through the emotional upheavals facing a widowed young professional." (The Historical Novels Review, Issue 34, )
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
good read,
By
This review is from: Find Me Again: A Rebecca Temple Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
I found the book extremely interesting. The background of the story includes areas I know well and for me that factor is a plus.
The two stories fit together seamlessly. I loaned the book to my smartest friend with a solid recommendation. Now I plan to buy her first book
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth the Wait,
By
This review is from: Find Me Again: A Rebecca Temple Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
FIND ME AGAIN was well worth the wait. The second in the Rebecca Temple series set in Toronto in the late Seventies finds the sensitive physician still trying to come to terms with the premature death of her husband. While her relationship with her own Jewish family is an anchor, maintaining a friendship with strong-minded Sarah, her mother-in-law, is a challenge. This talented and complex older woman welcomes a former friend from wartime Poland who has brought her daughter to Canada to treat a serious blood disease. A tangled web emerges, with horrifying tales of treachery and savagery when Poland served as workcamp and deathcamp for Jews and ethnics. With this black scene in the background, enter a charming Polish count now working for a mining company mogul who may or may not be the sick girl's father. A historical novelist on the verge of publication, the count spins tales of Enlightenment Europe, intermarriage at the courts, and intrigue with the future Catherine the Great and the last king of Poland. Does his hexadactyly (six fingers) hold the key to a genetic conundrum? Chapters alternate a subtle modern courtship with a historical mystery, and Warsh embraces the scholarship to furnish convincing and often bemusing details of harrowing trips across old Russia and nights in drafty and crumbling palace halls. Her description of the fur-lined sleigh which contains a stove and mattresses, so large that a dozen horses must pull it, conjures up a matchless image. The spectre of the fabled Scottish Young Pretender haunting the courts of Europe adds another dimension to an exciting period. This book is a dazzling and thought-provoking read, a whirlwind tour of a young woman caught in the snares of love, and one also enthralled, who watches from the perspective of centuries, powerless to help, but too fascinated to turn away.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth the Wait,
By Lou Allin "Islander" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Find Me Again: A Rebecca Temple Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
FIND ME AGAIN was well worth the wait. The second in the Rebecca Temple series set in Toronto in the late Seventies finds the sensitive physician still trying to come to terms with the premature death of her husband. While her relationship with her own Jewish family is an anchor, maintaining a friendship with strong-minded Sarah, her mother-in-law, is a challenge. This talented and complex older woman welcomes a former friend from wartime Poland who has brought her daughter to Canada to treat a serious blood disease. A tangled web emerges, with horrifying tales of treachery and savagery when Poland served as workcamp and deathcamp for Jews and ethnics. With this black scene in the background, enter a charming Polish count now working for a mining company mogul who may or may not be the sick girl's father. A historical novelist on the verge of publication, the count spins tales of Enlightenment Europe, intermarriage at the courts, and intrigue with the future Catherine the Great and the last king of Poland. Does his hexadactyly (six fingers) hold the key to a genetic conundrum? Chapters alternate a subtle modern courtship with a historical mystery, and Warsh embraces the scholarship to furnish convincing and often bemusing details of harrowing trips across old Russia and nights in drafty and crumbling palace halls. Her description of the fur-lined sleigh which contains a stove and mattresses, so large that a dozen horses must pull it, conjures up a matchless image. The spectre of the fabled Scottish Young Pretender haunting the courts of Europe adds another dimension to an exciting period. This book is a dazzling and thought-provoking read, a whirlwind tour of a young woman caught in the snares of love, and one also enthralled, who watches from the perspective of centuries, powerless to help, but too fascinated to turn away.
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