{"product_id":"love-and-treasure-isbn-9780307739575","title":"Love and Treasure","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003eAn Oprah.com Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1945, on the outskirts of Salzburg, American soldiers discover a train filled with unspeakable riches: gold watches and wedding rings, picture frames and Shabbat candlesticks.  Jack Wiseman is the lieutenant tasked with guarding this treasure in the chaotic aftermath of war—a responsibility that grows more complicated when he meets Ilona, a fierce, beautiful Hungarian woman who has lost everything in the ravages of the Holocaust.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSeventy years later, amid the shadowy world of art dealers who profit off the sins of previous generations, Jack gives a necklace to his granddaughter, Natalie, and charges her with returning it to its owner. And as Natalie searches for the woman whose portrait and unknown fate have come to haunt her, she will come to understand the secret her grandfather took to his grave.\u003c\/p\u003e\"Grounded in history, this exciting novel is full of twists and compelling characters.”\u003cbr\u003e—Isabel Allende\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Waldman’s historically resonant novel offers stories within stories, spanning a century. . . . A page-turner.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Powerful. . . . Waldman sustains her multiple plot lines with breathless confidence and descriptive panache.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Waldman is a wonderfully imaginative writer, but she’s drawn the central event of her absorbing new novel directly from history …. [A] triumph.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“One is quickly caught up in \u003ci\u003eLove and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e . . . at times a document, a thriller, a love story, a search.” —Michael Ondaatje  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“A novel to love and treasure.” —Philippa Gregory\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Thoughtful, expansive. . . . The pendant’s crooked passage across the century . . . hold[s] the book’s elegantly balanced parts together like the wire of a Calder mobile.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ambitious, absorbing, and poignantly moving.” —Joyce Carol Oates\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Engaging. . . . Lively. . . . The female characters  … are headstrong women brimming with passion, regrets and ideals.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Evocative and enthralling.\" —\u003ci\u003eMinneapolis Star Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A tragic love story rooted in one of our darkest moments. . . . Readers will sink into Waldman’s rich descriptions.” —\u003ci\u003eMORE \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLove and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e is like the treasure train it chases: fast-paced, bound by a fierce mission, full of bright secrets and racingly, relentlessly moving.” —Daniel Handler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A compelling meditation on love, missed connections and the pull of history on the present…. Well-written and entertaining.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLove and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e is less concerned with belongings than with belonging—with the Jewish people’s ongoing hunt for community and homeland, and what one character calls ‘a sense of loyalty and identity’\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e Those things, once stolen, are much harder to get back.” \u003ci\u003e—The Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What ethics govern the custodians of property that can never be returned? How do the personal and the political intertwine in the wake of historical tragedy? These questions permeate the novel. . . . The human stories behind the looted objects flicker into life.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“One of the most notorious cases of property theft in WWII. . .  is a story ripe for retelling . . .  Waldman brings to life the world of the Central European Jewish haute bourgeoisie.” —\u003ci\u003eTablet Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Classic perfection . . . . One never knows what turning the page will bring. Highly recommended.” —\u003ci\u003eNew York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Conveys the scope of the tragedy as well as the richness of Hungarian Jewish history . . . Her best work.” —\u003ci\u003eJ Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLove and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e is romantic, provocative and ripe for discussion—a historical novel that is as timely and relevant as ever.” –Bookreporter.com \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Exquisitely crafted.”  —\u003ci\u003eSan Jose Mercury News\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A work that measures memory against oblivion, value against wealth, and legacy against possession.\" —\u003ci\u003eO, The Oprah Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLove and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e embodies the staples of a timeless adventure narrative. . . . An exhilarating read that is as thoughtful as it is provocative.” —\u003ci\u003eVox Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Waldman’s novel skips continents and generations, telling a multi-layered and well-constructed story.” —\u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Full of intriguing complexity. . . . Calls us to reevaluate what it is that we treasure most.” —\u003ci\u003eBustle \u003c\/i\u003eAyelet Waldman is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eRed Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDaughter’s Keeper, \u003c\/i\u003eas well as of the essay collection \u003ci\u003eBad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace\u003c\/i\u003e and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and four children.\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the Hardcover Edition\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• 1 •\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethey found the train parked on an open spur not far from  the station at Werfen. When they pulled up to the siding in their jeeps,  Captain Rigsdale jumped out with a show of alacrity, but Jack hung  back, eyeing the train. More than forty wagons, both passenger and  freight. The nature of the cargo was as yet undetermined, but in this  green and mountainous corner of the American Zone, a string of boxcars  was never something Jack felt eager to explore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFencing the train  were enemy troops uniformed in ragged khaki. They carried fég 35m  rifles, but they had flagged their right sleeves with strips torn from  white bedsheets, and they displayed no apparent satisfaction with their  prize. By the side of the rails, a woman crouched over a wooden bucket  filled with soapy water, wringing out a length of white cotton shirting.  Two small boys took turns leaping from the door of one of the passenger  cars, marking the lengths of their jumps with pebbles and bickering  over who had leaped farther. They spoke a language unknown to Jack, but  he assumed, based on what Rigsdale had told him, that it was Hungarian.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Come on, Wiseman,” Rigsdale called over his shoulder. “You’re supposed to be fluent in gibberish.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack  climbed down from the jeep and followed Rigsdale toward the train. He  had never worked for this particular captain before, but by now he was  used to receiving sudden assignments to the command of senior officers  tasked with undertaking excursions into obscure and doubtful backwaters  of the Occupied Zone. Jack had a gift for topography and a photographic  memory for maps. He had a feel for landscape and a true inner compass,  and in his imagination the most cursory and vague of descriptions, a  two-dimensional scrawl on a scrap of paper, took on depth and accuracy.  This aptitude, which in civilian life had meant little more than always  knowing whether he was facing uptown or downtown when he came up out of  the subway, had found its perfect application in the war. Even during  the confusion of battle, command had always been able to rely on  Wiseman’s company to be where it was supposed to be and, even more  important, to be moving in the right direction, something not always  true of the rest of the division. This spatial acuity, along with his  fluency in German, French, Italian, and (less usefully) Latin and  ancient Greek, kept him in demand with the brass, who contended among  themselves to have him attached to their commands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What’re they saying?” Rigsdale said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I don’t know, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Well, figure it out, goddamn it.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne  of the enemy soldiers ducked back into the passenger car from which the  boys were leaping. Jack lifted his rifle. A moment later, a portly  little man in a gray suit, complete with vest and watch fob, emerged  from the same carriage and stepped down, wiping his mouth with a  handkerchief, still chewing a mouthful of something. Like the guards, he  had tied a scrap of white fabric around his upper arm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man  hurried over to the half-dozen American soldiers standing by their two  jeeps, his expression at once servile and calculating, as if they were  potential customers of undetermined means. He extended his hand to shake  Captain Rigsdale’s, seemed to think the better of it, and instead gave  him a crisp, theatrical salute.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRigsdale kept his own hands tucked by the thumbs into the webbed belt at his hips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Captain John F. Rigsdale, U.S. Army, Forty-Second Division. You the conductor of this choo-choo?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man shook his head, frowning. “No English. Deutsch? Français?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Rigsdale said, motioning Jack forward.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Deutsch,” Jack said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  man’s German was fluent, although the Hungarian accent made the  language sound softer, mellifluous, the r’s rolled on the tongue rather  than the back of the throat, the emphasis placed on the beginning of the  words. Jack’s accent had its own peculiarities. Beneath the elegant  High German cultivated by the Berliner refugee who had taught his German  classes at Columbia University, Jack spoke with a touch of the  Galicianer Yiddish of his maternal grandparents. His father’s parents,  of authentic German Jewish stock, had never to his knowledge uttered a  word in that language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“His name is Avar László,” Jack told Rigsdale. “He’s in charge of the train.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ask him if he’s a military officer, and if so why he’s not in uniform.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe  was, Avar said, a civil servant, the former mayor of the town of Zenta,  currently working for something he called the Property Office.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ask Mr. László why the hell his men haven’t turned their arms over to the U.S. government,” Rigsdale said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Avar,” the Hungarian said in German. “My surname is Avar. Dr. Avar. László is my first name.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack asked Dr. Avar if he was aware that the terms of surrender required that enemy soldiers turn over their weapons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar  said that he was aware of the order, but regrettably the guns were  necessary to protect the train’s cargo. He said his men had been  fighting off looters since the train’s departure from Hungary. In May  they’d been in a shoot-out with a group of German soldiers, and recently  they’d been dealing with increasing problems from the local population,  whose greed was inflamed by rumors of what was held in the wagons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tell  him I’m deeply sorry to hear how hard his life has been lately and that  the U.S. Army is here to unburden him of all his sorrows,” Captain  Rigsdale said. “And his guns, too.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy now a small group of  civilians had descended from the passenger carriages. One of them  stepped forward and conferred with Avar, who nodded vigorously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack  translated. “They want us to know that nobody’s given them any  provisions. Avar says they’ve been starving.” Jack looked doubtfully at  the vigorous guards, the men in their neat suits, the plump-cheeked  children. “Starving,” he supposed, was a relative term.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  captain said, “Tell him they’ll all be fed once they get to the DP  camps. Now I want to have a look inside the cars. See what all the fuss  is about.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar led them to the first of the cargo wagons, its  doors officially sealed with bureaucratic wallpaper bearing an elaborate  pattern of stamps and insignia. Jack looked down the row of boxcars.  Some of the seals along the train remained intact. Others looked  tattered, torn away. What that proved or didn’t prove, he wasn’t sure.  There was no way of knowing whether the seals had been put there six  months or six hours before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the door of the first cargo wagon,  Avar hesitated. He conferred in Hungarian with one of his colleagues, a  lanky, elderly gentleman with extravagant mustaches waxed to points,  before making his wishes known to Jack.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What now?” Rigsdale said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He’s asking for a receipt.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The fuck he is.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“To show that we assume protection of this property on behalf of the Hungarian government.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar  didn’t need Jack to translate the look on the captain’s face. Puffing  up his chest, the little man asked Jack to remind his commanding officer  that the cargo of the train was Hungarian state property, and therefore  he, Avar, with all due respect, could only turn over the custody of  said cargo if assurances were made that it would, in due time, be  returned to the government of Hungary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lieutenant, please remind  Mr. Avar that the government of Hungary just got its ass handed to it,  and suggest to him, if you would be so kind, that he, his men, and his  whole damn country are now under the authority of the Allied forces. I  am not going to give him a goddamn receipt, and he should please open  this motherfucking door now, before I use his fat head as a battering  ram.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn as formal a German as he could muster, Jack said,  “Captain Rigsdale reminds you that he speaks with the full authority of  the United States Army, and requests that you delay opening the boxcar  no longer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar glanced at his guards, and Jack silently cursed  the military command that had sent six men to disarm sixty. Though he  never made vocal his disapproval, he had learned by hard experience that  a soldier rarely lost money betting against the wisdom of his superior  officers. The institutionalized idiocy was one of the many reasons that  for nearly all of the past year and a half since his enlistment Jack had  hated the war, hated the army, hated even the civilians who all too  often seemed to despise their American liberators far more than they had  their German conquerors. The only people he didn’t hate were the men  with whom he served in the 222nd Battalion of the 42nd Infantry, the  Rainbow Division, none of whom he’d known for longer than a year and all  of whom he loved with a devotion he had never felt before for anyone,  not even the girlfriend who had predictably broken his heart in a letter  a mere three weeks after he received his commission. He was especially  fond of the men of H Company, whose dwindling ranks he had led on a  relentless slog through the torn-up landscape, through France and across  the Siegfried line until they reached Fürth, where the battalion  commanding officer, after a grueling exchange with a recalcitrant local  farmer, had decided that he needed the assistance of an aide conversant  in German and transferred Jack away from the men who were all that he  cared about in this miserable war. His many attempts to return to his  company defeated, Jack was left stewing in his loathing and waiting to  earn enough points for a discharge. Even considering the battle  decorations he’d received at a recent cluster muster, he was three  points shy of the eighty-five he needed to be sent home. Best possible  outcome, eighty-two points put him in Salzburg for three more months.  Worst possible, he was heading to the Pacific.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Hungarian having failed to respond to his order, Jack repeated, “Please open the boxcars.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcross  Avar’s face seemed to pass the entire history of his benighted people  in this interminable war: pride, belligerence, bravado, defensiveness,  anxiety, despair. And, finally, resignation. He removed a large iron key  from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket, inserted it into the  heavy padlock, and, with a grunt, sprung the lock. When he pushed the  door back, the seals tore with a pop like the bursting of an inflated  paper bag. The door rumbled open on its runners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe boxcar was  heaped with wooden cases and crates. Some of the cases had iron hinges  and clasps; others were nailed shut. Toward the back of the car they  stood in orderly stacks, but many of those nearest the door had been  pried open and were piled haphazardly one upon the other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pull a couple of those over here, Lieutenant,” Rigsdale said. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack  climbed up into the car and dragged over an open crate. He dug through  the straw and pulled out a teacup decorated with a pink rose and a  scattering of green leaves. The gilt-edged handle came off in his hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vorsicht!” Avar said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJack  gave a meaningful glance at the jumble of open boxes. No one else had  bothered to take the care that Avar seemed to expect of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Try another crate,” the captain said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  next crate contained a pile of expensive-looking camera equipment, none  of it padded with straw or excelsior. Some of the lenses were cracked.  What, Jack wondered, were these Hungarians doing riding around the  Austrian countryside with a trainload of household goods?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCaptain  Rigsdale ordered Avar to open another boxcar. This one contained rolls  of carpets. Most were stacked neatly, but someone had been pilfering  those nearest to the door; smaller carpets had been unrolled and draped  over the piles, and there were muddy boot tracks everywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Looters,” Avar said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“After the treasure,” Captain Rigsdale said after Jack had translated. “All this must have been on its way to the Alpenfestung.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong  the strange ideas held in common both by the Allies and the defeated  German troops was the chimera that, hidden in the mountains of southern  Bavaria, defended by one hundred thousand SS officers, the Nazis had  erected a final stronghold. Although there was no more evidence for the  existence of this national redoubt than there was for that of the city  of Atlantis or the valley of Shangri-la, everyone on both sides seemed  to be sure that it was there, hovering high above them, a Valhalla for  the desperate Germans and an anxiety dream for the Allies, many of whom  had a hard time accepting that their mythic Teutonic-warrior opponents  had not fought to the end predicted by their death’s-head insignia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Strange  kind of treasure,” Jack said, holding up a crystal liqueur glass. “Sir,  this doesn’t look like bank assets. It just seems to be a lot of, well,  stuff.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Let’s keep looking,” Rigsdale said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar led  them through the train, a car at a time. He showed them crude pine  crates of bed linens and fur coats, cases of men’s pocket and wrist  watches, of women’s jewelry. Jack opened up a box full of evening  purses, most of them beaded or decorated with silver chains. Another of  silver sugar basins, silver teapots engraved with monograms, bronze  statuettes of men on horseback. In some cars they found heaps of leather  wallets alongside silver cigarette cases, heavy musty-smelling furs  piled on top of brightly colored Oriental carpets, tangles of costume  jewelry, paintings of all sizes stacked one upon the other. The contents  of other cars had been painstakingly sorted, the radios neatly loaded  into wooden crates, the silver candlesticks separated from the vases,  the sets of china plates and porcelain platters carefully packed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  the fifth car, Avar opened an unlocked small wooden casket with brass  hinges. It was full to the brim with small misshapen loaves of gold and  gold coins stamped with mysterious insignia. This indeed was treasure,  like a child’s imaginary pirate’s trove, lustrous in the sunlight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You see?” Avar said in German. “Untouched since we left Brennbergbánya.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Where is Brennbergbánya?” Jack asked. “Is that where you came from?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This  train was loaded in Brennbergbánya. Before that we did the sorting and  organizing in the Óbánya Castle in Zirc. Before that most items were  stored in the warehouses of the Postal Savings Bank.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“But who does it belong to?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of Avar’s companions said something in Hungarian.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAvar said, “All property belongs to the people of Hungary. It must be returned to the people of Hungary.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen  Jack translated this, Rigsdale said, “Tell him the American government  is not in the business of stealing anybody’s property.” Rigsdale pointed  at the small casket. “Is this all the gold?” he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was  more gold, Avar told them, but they had distributed it throughout the  train to make it more difficult for looters to find. There was also a  small number of precious gems. Avar had done his best to protect the  most valuable property, but there had, as he’d said, been looters. And  also government officials had removed much of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“U.S. government?” Rigsdale asked.A Novel","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304587350245,"sku":"NP9780307739575","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307739575.jpg?v=1767731860","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/love-and-treasure-isbn-9780307739575","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}