EVA’S SECRET

Fryd’s historical novel charts a Jewish woman’s experiences in 20th-century Europe.

In 1978, Walter Pierce Anderson makes quite a discovery after the death of his mother, Eva, who left behind diaries written in Yiddish; when Walter asks a family friend about what he’s found, he learns, “Your mom wasn’t…a German aristocrat, Wally. She was Chawa Demb, a Polish Jew who lost her family in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Auschwitz.” Walter has spent his whole life thinking he “descended from a long line of proud Scotsmen and correct Germans.” The diaries begin in 1920s Poland. Chawa lives in a small town called Przedecz. When her father informs her that she must stop going to school, she is furious— young Chawa has no desire to become a traditional housewife. She cooks up a scheme to continue learning while she tutors the local butcher’s son; she also finds a way to learn Polish in her spare time. Her language skills later help her to earn some money by working in a local tavern. Chawa thinks that perhaps she will eventually head to America. Instead, she marries a local man named Leon, and when the Germans invade Poland, Leon and Chawa are forced to hide in the home of a Polish farmer. After the end of the war, Leon is out of the picture and Chawa is in Paris. She meets a writer named Solomon Kozlowsky, who introduces her to his intellectual friends. Eva has something the intellectuals do not: the street smarts one gleans from spending years fighting to survive. She also has a driving desire to go to America.

This journey through time covers a lot of ground. Eva likes to stick to the facts when telling her story and doesn’t waste much time on embellishments. For instance, when she arrives in Paris, she writes of her condition, “I was starving, hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours, and looked forward to dinner at the soup kitchen.” She sums up her experience having a baby thusly: “I lay in a bright room on an immaculately clean bed, surrounded by two nurses and Dr. Wood, who gently directed me through the delivery.” The chapters move along smoothly as the reader remains curious about where Eva will go next and what sort of scheming will keep her alive and help her to overcome the many obstacles that always seem to be in her way. While readers know from the outset that she eventually settles in the United States as Eva Baum and has a son, the questions pertaining to precisely how this unfolds maintain tension in the narrative. The dialogue can read as flat—the characters are prone to making simple, obvious statements. A nurse says to Eva after she gives birth, “Glad to see you’re feeling better, dearie. Knew you would once you got to hold your baby.” When a character suspects something is wrong with Eva, they ask, “Is something the matter, Eva?” Ultimately, though, this plucky protagonist’s diaristic accounts of “small and large victories” leave an impression. This is an engaging, intimate tale about thriving under the most difficult of situations.

A character study that memorably chronicles one woman’s enduring will to succeed.