Frederick Reuss Mohr

Mohr

Frederick Reuss

Unbridled, May 2006, $25.95

ISBN: 1932961178

Jewish author Dr. Max Mohr, whose latest work The Diamond Heart had just been serialized, leaves his native Nazi Germany for war torn China. On the morning he is to depart from his home in the Tegernsee Valley, his weary wife Kathe is sad as if she knows something about her spouse's journey. She wonders why not some place closer like Prague unless they are to remain apart. Their young daughter Eva is excited as her father says his two women will join him soon, but though mom does not dissuade her otherwise she feels that is youthful foolishness. There he becomes a physician in Shanghai while his daughter waits word from him to join him and his wife waits for something else.

Though feeling more like a memoir narrative told in alternating chapters in China (Max's adventures) and Germany (the tales of Kathe and Eva) than a novel, biographical fiction readers will enjoy this interesting look at the highly regarded playwright. The story line is pieced together from family photographs that Frederick Reuss saw with approximately fifty included (part of why the book reads more like a memoir). This is a well written and fascinating period piece that enables readers to compare mid 1930s Germany and China with characters that seem so genuine that the audience can feel the pain of Kathe and the change from euphoria to doubter in Eve. Many readers will be disappointed that Mr. Reuss finally cannot explain why Mohr didn't take his family. Still this is a super insightful historical novel.

Harriet Klausner