The Storyteller

The Storyteller 760DD_TXT.indd 1 06/02/2013 11:41 Also by Jodi Picoult Songs of the Humpback Whale Harvesting the Heart Picture Perfect Mercy The Pact Keeping Faith Plain Truth Salem Falls Perfect Match Second Glance My Sister’s Keeper Vanishing Acts The Tenth Circle Nineteen Minutes Change of Heart Handle with Care House Rules Sing You Home Lone Wolf Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer Between the Lines 760DD_TXT.indd 2 06/02/2013 11:41 JODI PICOULT The Storyteller 760DD_TXT.indd 3 06/02/2013 11:41 First published in America in 2013 by Atria Books An imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton An Hachette UK company 1 Copyright © Jodi Picoult 2013 The right of Jodi Picoult to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any references to historical events or places are used fictitiously. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 76663 9 Trade paperback ISBN 978 1 444 76664 6 Ebook ISBN 978 1 444 76665 3 Typeset in Berkley Oldstyle by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.hodder.co.uk 760DD_TXT.indd 4 06/02/2013 11:41 This special first print run ofThe Storyteller is dedicated to my UK fans . you are the reason I keep writing and keep visiting. So many of you have touched me with your loyalty and kind comments we decided to put some of your names in the endpapers of the book as our way to say thank you. 760DD_TXT.indd 5 06/02/2013 11:41 760DD_TXT.indd 6 06/02/2013 11:41 For my mother, Jane Picoult, because you taught me there is nothing more important than family. And because after twenty years, it’s your turn again. 760DD_TXT.indd 7 06/02/2013 11:41 760DD_TXT.indd 8 06/02/2013 11:41 Acknowledgments This book began with another: The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal. While a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, Wiesenthal was brought to the deathbed of an SS soldier, who wanted to confess to and be forgiven by a Jew. The moral conundrum in which Wiesenthal found himself has been the starting point for many philosophical and moral analyses about the dynamics between victims of genocide and the perpetrators – and it got me thinking about what would happen if the same request was made, decades later, to a Jewish prisoner’s granddaughter. To undertake a novel grounded in one of the most horrible crimes against humanity in history is a daunting task, because even when one is writing fiction, getting the details right becomes an exercise in honoring those who survived, and those who did not. I am indebted to the following people for their assistance in bringing to life both Sage’s world in the present day and Minka’s world in the past. For teaching me to bake bread, and the most delicious research session of my career, thanks to Martin Philip. Thanks to Elizabeth Martin and One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia, for teaching me how to bake with nefarious intent. For anecdotes about Catholic school, thanks to Katie Desmond. For helping me spell Darija’s dance terminology, thanks to Allyson Sawyer. For teaching me the dynamics of a grief group, thanks to Susan Carpenter. For preliminary legal, law enforcement, and war tribunal questions, thanks to Alex Whiting, Frank Moran, and Lise Gescheidt. While writing this book, I auctioned off a character name to help raise money for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. 760DD_TXT.indd 9 06/02/2013 11:41 x JODI PICOULT Thanks to Mary DeAngelis for her generosity, and for providing her name to Sage’s best friend. Eli Rosenbaum, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Department of Justice, is a real-live Nazi hunter who found the time to teach me what he does, let me create a character based on his experiences, and still managed to slay dragons. I am incredibly grateful to know someone like him is out there tirelessly doing what he does. (And I appreciate the fact that he let me take artistic license on the speed it takes for historians to get information from NARA. In real life it would be days, not minutes.) I am grateful to Paul Wieser, who gave me my first lesson on Third Reich history, and to Steffi Gladebeck, who provided the German perspective. But I am most indebted to Dr. Peter Black, Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who suffered my endless questions, corrected me with great patience, helped me cobble together a viable Nazi upbringing, and read sections to help ensure historical accuracy. I mean it whole- heartedly when I say I could not have written this book without his input. I am grateful to Team Jodi at Emily Bestler Books/Simon & Schuster: Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, Kate Cetrulo, Caroline Porter, Chris Lloreda, Jeanne Lee, Gary Urda, Lisa Keim, Rachel Zugschwert, Michael Selleck, and the many others who have helped my career grow. Thanks to the crackerjack PR team of David Brown, Valerie Vennix, Camille McDuffie, and Kathleen Carter Zrelak, who are so good at getting everyone else as excited about a new book as I always am. To Emily Bestler, I value your guidance, your friend- ship, your commitment to my writing, and your ability to find the best shopping websites ever. Laura Gross, happy anniversary. Thanks for the information on Oneg Shabbat, for letting Sage get under your skin, and most of all for being my wingman. Thanks to my father, who did indeed conduct a Seder in a Donald Duck voice when we were small. As for my mother – I knew she was formidable, but when I asked if maybe she could 760DD_TXT.indd 10 06/02/2013 11:41 The Storyteller xi find me some Holocaust survivors, I had names and numbers within a day. She paved the way for this book, and I am grateful. It is to those men and women, however, that I owe the greatest debt. The extensive research I conducted for this novel included speaking to a group of amazing people – Holocaust survivors, whose experiences during the war in the ghettos, in villages, in cities, and in concentration camps fed my imagination and allowed me to create the character of Minka. Although Minka suffers similar horrors as those described to me by survivors and Nazi hunters, she is not based on any one person I met or heard about; she is truly a work of fiction. So, to the survivors who opened their homes and their hearts, I am honored that you chose to share your stories with me. Thank you, Sandy Zuckerman – who provided me with the transcript of her mother, Sylvia Green’s experiences during the Holocaust. Thank you, Gerda Weissman Klein, for your courage and your creativity as a writer. Thank you, Bernie Scheer, for your honesty and your generosity of spirit while telling me your experiences. And thank you, Mania Salinger, for your bravery, for letting me rifle through the bits and pieces of your life, and for becoming a treasured friend. And last, thanks to my family: Tim, Kyle (who had the great foresight to take German while I was writing this book), Jake, and Samantha (who penned a few vampiric paragraphs for me to use). The four of you are the story of my life. 760DD_TXT.indd 11 06/02/2013 11:41 760DD_TXT.indd 12 06/02/2013 11:41 The Storyteller 760DD_TXT.indd 13 06/02/2013 11:41 760DD_TXT.indd 14 06/02/2013 11:41 y father trusted me with the details of his death. ‘Ania,’ he would Msay, ‘no whiskey at my funeral. I want the finest blackberry wine. No weeping, mind you. Just dancing. And when they lower me into the ground, I want a fanfare of trumpets, and white butterflies.’ A character, that was my father. He was the village baker, and every day, in addition to the loaves he would make for the town, he would create a single roll for me that was as unique as it was delicious: a twist like a princess’s crown, dough mixed with sweet cinnamon and the richest chocolate. The secret ingredient, he said, was his love for me, and this made it taste better than anything else I had ever eaten. We lived on the outskirts of a village so small that everyone knew everyone else by name. Our home was made of river stone, with a thatched roof; the hearth where my father baked heated the entire cottage.

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