The Seven Letters Her Story is Lost in Time by Jan Harvey

The Seven Letters Her Story is Lost in Time is a beautiful novel written by Jan Harvey.

The story tell the adventures lived by Colette, a french girl assigned as a maid in a brothel to Paris by a commando of the Resistance.
Claudette feels something for Yves the leader of the commando. She is not prepared to afford to a big city, but she does it for patriotic spirit.

The girl, young and inexperienced jump in a let's say "colored" world where everyday she meet German men in search for sex in the special house owned by Madame Odile.

Our days: Freddy March disappears tragically. He was a close friend of Hat, Connie Webber's friend.
Freddy and Hat people of a certain age, Hat devastated by the departure of his friend a famous  playwright. His life spent surrounded by wagons of interesting people, plays, theaters, creativity and of course materials like books, papers, letters, documents, pictures. Hat can't do anything alone and she doesn't want to do that all alone asking to Connie - and later Connie asking to Matt, a potential new boyfriend for her - if she can help her to put some order in Freddy's house.

While they are cleaning a special room where Freddy loved to stay during the day they find various letters and a picture of a famous actress, remarking the German origin of Freddy.

Connie and Matt are curious. No one close to them knew a lot of Freddy's past. He grew up motherless, and without to know who was his dad. And plus: German?

The story is too much intriguing for leaving it alone and so Matt and Connie motivated to discover much more will afford for work  to Paris where they can start a good investigation that will bring them to a shocking reality and a past no one would have imagined for the various protagonists of this book.

The Seven Letters is a story about the complexity of life in time-war, when certainties gone and sentiments like fear, diffidence replace the dear old values leaving once the war will be finished unrecognizable places and more matured and experienced human being.
It's also a very fresh book about solidarity, friendship, first loves,  delusions,

Death and life, secrets and hidden, buried stories and people mixed together in a wonderful story where the present will give peace and justice to the past.

Freddy didn't spend all his life searching for the truth and his origins. Other ones will close the circle of Freddy's life once gone and this, will re-create the powerful connection and cement existing between death and life, life and death.

The author visited the various places in Paris where the story is set and the book is dedicated to the women of The Chabanais.

I thank Matador Troubador for the book review copy.


Anna Maria Polidori