BETWEEN THESE WALLS

In Newman’s (Getting Rich Doing What You Love, 2005) historical novel, an art curator receives a letter from Germany that shines a light on the cloudy circumstances of his birth.

In 1988, Daniel Singer, an expert on European Renaissance art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, receives a mysterious letter from Germany. It looks like official correspondence, although it’s hard to be certain as it’s written in German—a language that Daniel doesn’t speak. He wonders, however, if the letter contains key information about his past; his parents, Samuel and Agatha, told him long ago that he was adopted; his biological father, they said, was an American soldier that died serving in World War II, and his mother died soon after childbirth. However, although Daniel had seen his adoption certificate, he was never able to locate any documents that verified the details of his birth. From this setup, Newman constructs an impressively imaginative but convoluted tale that revolves around the enigmatic character of Daniel’s genesis. It involves a series of historically divergent tales; for example, the book chronicles the life of Jewish lawyer Arnold Weisz, who’s forced out of his profession when the Nazis take power and compelled to hide his family in Berlin. It also tells the tale of Bruno Schmidt, an ambitious German lawyer who rises to a position of great authority in the SS. Adding to an already overly packed plot, Newman details Samuel’s service as a military surgeon in World War II and the Arab-Israeli War in 1948 as well as Daniel's later service with the Mossad. The historical authenticity of the work is admirable; the author’s research is scrupulously rigorous, and much of the book is enjoyably edifying, as it offers a peek into several tumultuous conflicts in the 20th century. But overall, the story feels muddled and finally implausible, and the author’s prose style is rather wooden; for instance, upon receiving the peculiar letter, Daniel wonders to himself: “What could all this be about? I can’t help but think that there might be something important here.”

A historically astute but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to braid too many stories into a unified whole.