Was it wanderlust or romantic folly that drove 17-year-old Pauline to abandon her Franconian village for distant New York in 1899? What drove the worldly-wise Max to send her off with the enormous sum of 2,000 gold marks, on her own, so far away, for a good two years? What made him so sure that when she came back Pauline would be the perfect companion for his extensive travels, going halfway around the world, through the heart of Asia all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula?
Sixty years later, Pauline receives a visit from Elsa, a young woman whom Pauline “adopted via letter” as a child in the postwar period. In their conversations, the two women wander through the deep labyrinth of the moments of Pauline’s life. With the help of letters, photographs, notes and poems, they weave together the colorful threads of a time into a tapestry whose pattern only gradually becomes clear.
A book about world travels and lost memories. And about an improbable love story and the predictability of happiness.
