THE HIDDEN LETTERS OF VELTA B

Using a quiet, fluid voice, Hillary Huber narrates this convoluted tale of Maris, who heard the secrets of the dead when he was a boy. Maris was born into a family of gravediggers in Latvia, a family that often hid things in the ground, where they were safe from prying eyes. Ochsner's descriptions of Latvian life before and after WWII follow the ebb and flow of the story. When Maris unearths his great-grandmother Velta's letters, he learns more about his past and that of his city. The novel peels away the veneer of idyllic life in small-town Latvia, revealing bigoted and viciously anti-Semitic attitudes toward non-Latvians in the twentieth century jarringly contrasted with lyrical descriptions of the countryside. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2016]