THE MYSTERIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THE PAST

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Do you know the fabulous Katherine Reay? She has a brilliant new book out right now called THE BERLIN LETTERS— which was recently picked as an NPR “Must Read.” Whoa.


And quickly, here’s the scoop: Uncovering a startling family secret sets CIA cryptographer Luisa Voekler on the journey of a life-time from Washington DC to East Berlin, during the tumultuous first week in November 1989, and deep into Berlin’s divided history in an effort to understand her past, change her future, and rescue her father from a Stasi prison.

Whoa. The Booklist starred review says 'Fans of codebreakers, spies, and Cold War dramas will be entrapped by Reay's tale of courage, love, and honor set against the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall.'

(And oh, yes. Katherine is giving a paperback book to one super-lucky commenter—US only please, the international postage is monstrous.)

 

But THE BERLIN LETTERS is all about startling family secrets. We’ve talked about them here before, but today Katherine has a fascinating new way to look at them.

First, I cannot resist showing you this photo of Katherine's grandmother, the far left, with her two sisters in Miami, taken sometime in the late 1930s.

Can’t you instantly tell there are stories here? You'll hear about it below.

THE MYSTERIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THE PAST
By Katherine Reay

 

I’m continually astounded at how much fiction not only illuminates the human experience, but teaches me something new about it as well. I find it in the books I read, and I find it in the books I write.


Several years ago, I wrote a fun contemporary novel titled The Printed Letter Bookshop and, within that tiny store, three women work out love and life. Through mishaps, mayhem, and misunderstandings, they may also save the bookstore.

But what struck me while writing that story was not the misunderstandings that happen within the shop, but the misunderstandings within each character’s life before she stepped onto the page. I don’t know if I had the intention as I began writing, but The Printed Letter Bookshop is as much about the present and a charming bookstore as it is about each woman’s past, whether she truly understands that past or not.

As I wrapped up that novel and began imagining a new one, I learned a family story — about my own past.

It’s always been known in my family that back in the 1920s my grandmother and her two sisters were sent from their home in Charleston, South Carolina, to live with their aunt in Miami, Florida. Family-lore attributed the move to my grandmother’s allergies.

However, about four years ago, my grandmother’s younger sister was nearing the end of her life and began sharing childhood stories with her own children. She told them that she and her sisters were not sent away because of my grandmother’s allergies, but because their father had remarried after their mother’s death and their new stepmother wanted them out of the house. Their aunt in Miami, thankfully, took the three young girls in.

And here they all are.

Now, the reason I opened this story stating it was about “my past” is because that’s what the past does — it trickles down generations. I will never know, especially because my grandmother never mentioned this chapter in her life, how she felt about it or how it formed her.

But there is no way it didn’t carry consequences.

Such a water-shed moment had to have influenced the way she thought about love, unconditional and conditional, family, fathers, marriage, loyalty, and, without doubt, stepmothers. I would bet there wasn’t an aspect of her inner-world that did not change in that moment. And, if that’s true, there’s no way it didn’t shape how she raised her own four children, and, perhaps, the way my own father parented his three kids.

 

I hold no assumptions, by the way. I do not assume the consequences were all or in part negative. She may not have known herself — or it may have been obvious to her every day of her life. As she never talked about it, there will never be answers to those questions. But that’s part of life, too, isn’t it? We more often live without answers than we rest in confident knowledge and clarity.

After all, while I might assume such an event would make a person more circumspect and wary, perhaps it made my grandmother more open, loyal, loving, and devoted. I have wonderful memories of her, despite the fact she cooked green beans from morning to dinnertime. She was involved, interested, and very present to all her grandchildren. We lived in the same city during my elementary school years and enjoyed dinners at my grandparents’ home almost every Sunday.

The point is — this is what I love about fiction. Through novels, we get to explore the past, its implications and its consequences, in varied and nuanced ways. We, as readers, get to dip our toes into those experiences, try them on, see how they fit, and learn new tidbits about life and the human experience from them — all from the safety of our armchairs.

And I’m not maligning those armchairs either. That’s a vital part of this incredibly vulnerable experience because, I suspect, without that safety-net we would instinctively put our defenses and keep ourselves from venturing so far. Fiction sneaks into our souls because it wraps us in an “illusion” and, wrapped in that fictional dream, we often forget it often presents a reality more solid than the most trusted fact.

 

Are there family stories that have surprised and shaped you? And what are some of your favorite novels that shaped your thinking? 

 

HANK: Oh, this has really got me thinking. Well, my step-father's mother had a club of her friends, back in the say, forties. They were extremely excruciatingly careful about who they would allow to join. They were so picky and persnickety that they could never find anyone good enough to keep the club alive, so it just...died along with them. I think that is incredibly powerful. And ridiculous. And sad. I think about it all the time. It was called The Tuesday Club, I just remembered. SO funny.

And how about you, Reds and Readers?

Don’t forget to comment to enter to win THE BERLIN LETTERS!

 

 

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including A SHADOW IN MOSCOW and her recent release, THE BERLIN LETTERS, a Cold War spy novel, inspired by the Berlin Wall and the women who served in the CIA’s Venona Project, which was recently picked as a NPR “Must Read.” When not writing, Katherine hosts the What the Dickens Book Club on Facebook and weekly chats with authors and booksellers at The 10 Minute Book Talk on Instagram. But if she’s really lucky, you’ll find her fly fishing and hiking in Montana. You can meet Katherine at www.katherinereay.com or on Facebook: KatherineReayBooks, Twitter: @katherine_reay and Instagram: @katherinereay