Publisher's Synopsis
Forgotten in a hiding place from the Second World War, in Salonica, Greece, a sewing box full of letters and memories finds its way to Brazil, entrusted to Dora Openheim in 1970.Following the letters, beginning in 1865 with Anna Varsano, a dressmaker in Sicily, daughter of a humble and obscure Sephardic jeweller Rafaelle Cohen and ending with the harrowing story of a Holocaust survivor in 1973 in Salonica, Sealed Letters brings to life the private and secret story of the most important Jewish banker and philanthropist of his time: Baron Maurice de Hirsch. In 1882, Maurice de Hirsch is founding the Banque de Paris et Pays-Bas- today called Paribas. At the same time, he is finishing the construction of the first railroad that will link Constantinople to Paris, that one day would be called the Orient Express. Offering part of his fortune, Baron Hirsch attempts to save lives by negotiating with the Czar of Russia to send thousands of Jewish families persecuted in pogroms, to haven in North America, Argentina and Brazil. And in becoming the protector and financier of the personal expenses of the Prince of Wales, the future king of England Edward VII, the Baron conceals a secret that, if revealed, would shake the British Empire. At the age of seventeen Michaela Varsano is taken from Sicily to Bavaria as a ward of the aristocratic Baroness Clara de Hirsch. Meanwhile, her mother stays on in Taormina and her father, Dottore Alberto, a pharmacist, strives to start a new life in Salonica and Constantinople. Between studies and journeys, the beautiful untamed Sicilian transgresses social boundaries by falling in love with Lucien de Hirsch, the Baron's only son, in a way that will come to change History. Sealed Letters 1850-1917, a meticulously researched narrative, recreates an era and echoes across continents, bringing passion and love, swelling in the soul of every reader fortunate enough to read it.
