Redel, Victoria (1959- ). The Border of Truth.

Redel's eloquent, highly moving novel about family secrets has at its center the story - little remembered today - of the chartered Portugese liner QUANZA which, with a human cargo of 317 Jewish refugees fleeing war-torn Europe, was during August and September 1940 briefly at the center of American consciousness. Among the QUANZA's passengers is 16 year old Itzak Lejdel of Brussels, traveling alone from Belgium and hoping for asylum in an America populated (at least in his over-active imagination) by glamorous movie stars and public-minded politicians sympathetic to the plight of Jews like himself. Redel's novel alternates in time between the events of 1940 and 2003, when Itzak's daughter first learns of her father's presence aboard the QUANZA. The 1940 sections are epistolatory in nature and feature letters that young Itzak has written to none other than Eleanor Roosevelt, all typed out on his portable typewriter in an idiosyncratic English which is alternatingly funny and heartbreaking. Redel's descriptions of life aboard the refugee ship, her passengers and indeed the role that Eleanor Roosevelt played in resolving the QUANZA "crisis" (86 refugees - including fictitious Itzak - were initially refused entry into the United States when the ship touched port in Newport News, Va. after having been turned away from Vera Cruz, Mexico; Mrs. Roosevelt's behind-the-scenes intervention helped get the refugees gain entry to the U.S.) are well drawn and with a sense of nail-biting immediacy that makes the events of 1940 read as if they were taking place today. Redel includes as characters several very-real players in the QUANZA crisis, including the ship's captain (Captain Harberts), a once well-known 1930s French movie star couple (Marcel Dalio and Madeleine Le Beau - obviously Jewish - who only two years later would play featured roles in a very famous Hollywood take on World War 2 refugees, "Casablanca"), American Secretary of State Cordell Hull (who does not come across at all sympathetically) and of course Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.