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Sign up todayCrossing the Borders of Time
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Learn moreLeslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees—the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbors. Then, barred from entering the United States, they lived in Cuba for almost two years before immigrating to New York.
This sweeping account of one family’s escape from the turmoil of war-torn Europe hangs upon the intimate and deeply personal story of the passionate romance between Maitland’s mother and a Catholic Frenchman. Separated by war and her family’s disapproval, the young lovers—Janine and Roland—lose each other for fifty years. It is a testimony to both Maitland’s investigative skills and her devotion to her mother that she successfully traced the lost Roland and was able to reunite him with Janine. Unlike so many stories of love during wartime, theirs has a happy ending.
Leslie Maitland is a former reporter for the New York Times who specialized in legal affairs and investigative reporting. She joined the Times after graduating from the University of Chicago and Harvard Divinity School. After breaking stories on the FBI’s undercover “Abscam” investigation into corruption in Congress, she moved to the New York Times Washington bureau to cover the Justice Department. After leaving the Times, she began, among other projects, extensive research for Crossing the Borders of Time, including five reporting trips to Europe and one to Cuba. Maitland has frequently participated in programs discussing literature on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. She lives with her husband in Bethesda, Maryland.
Leslie Maitland is a former reporter for the New York Times who specialized in legal affairs and investigative reporting. She joined the Times after graduating from the University of Chicago and Harvard Divinity School. After breaking stories on the FBI’s undercover “Abscam” investigation into corruption in Congress, she moved to the New York Times Washington bureau to cover the Justice Department. After leaving the Times, she began, among other projects, extensive research for Crossing the Borders of Time, including five reporting trips to Europe and one to Cuba. Maitland has frequently participated in programs discussing literature on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. She lives with her husband in Bethesda, Maryland.
Reviews
“One of those sweeping, epic, romantic novels that seems tailor-made for the Oscars and a long summer afternoon. Except it’s real! Leslie Maitland has the rare ability to bring history, adventure, and love alive. The fact that this story captures her mother’s life gives it a wonderful added poignancy. I wish I could sit in on the many delighted book groups that will devour this beautiful book.”
“How the small flame of an undying love can illuminate the darkness of a tragic era. This elegantly told story is for everyone.”
“A mesmerizing memoir of one family’s shattering experience during World War II. It’s a tale at once heartbreaking and uplifting.”
“Maitland is a brilliant reporter who knows what questions to ask and how to get her story. Written with the precision of a historian, the result is a work I could not put down and scarcely wanted to end.”
“A love affair thwarted by war, distance, and a disapproving family became the defining story of Leslie Maitland’s mother’s life, and by extension, her own. What happens next is surprising indeed.”
“Not only original social history of a high order, but one of the most poignant love-lost, love-found stories I have ever read, with an ending that Hollywood wouldn’t dare.”
“This wonderful book, written by a wonderful award-winning writer, did a notable job putting an extraordinary confluence of hope , love, hatred, and history of her family’s escape from Germany and France during World War II. Leslie Maitland’s personal account of her family is a major contribution to history interlaced with a lovely love story.”
“This is a worthy testament to how war and displacement conspire against personal happiness.”
“This is a fascinating story of thwarted love, longing, and the travails of one woman and one family within the broader context of war and persecution…[An] incredible story of the gauzy intersection of memory and fact.”
“A poignantly rendered, impeccably researched tale of a rupture healed by time.”
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