The Puzzle King
Betsy Carter, 2009
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616200169
Summary
On a gray morning in 1936, Flora Phelps stands in line at the American consulate in Stuttgart, Germany. She carries a gift for the consul, whom she will bribe in order to help her family get out of Hitler’s Germany.
This is the story of unlikely heroes, the lively, beautiful Flora and her husband, the brooding, studious Simon, two Jewish immigrants who were each sent to America by their families to find better lives. An improbable match, they meet in New York City and fall in love. Simon—inventor of the jigsaw puzzle—eventually makes his fortune.
Now wealthy, but still outsiders, Flora and Simon become obsessed with rescuing the loved ones they left behind in Europe whose fates are determined by growing anti-Semitism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Inspired by her family’s legends, Betsy Carter weaves a memorable tale. In the tradition of Suite Française or Amy Bloom's Away, she explores a fascinating moment in history and creates a cast of characters who endure with dignity, grace, and hope for the future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Betsy Carter is the author of Swim to Me and The Orange Blossom Special. Her memoir, Nothing to Fall Back On, was a national bestseller.
She is a contributing editor for O: The Oprah Magazine and writes for Good Housekeeping, New York, and AARP, among others. Carter formerly served as an editor at Esquire, Newsweek, and Harper's Bazaar, and was the founding editor of New York Woman. She lives in New York City. (From the publisher.)
More
Her Own Words: Why I Wrote The Puzzle King
My great uncle invented Monopoly. At least that's what I grew up believing. But then again, I was raised in a family where mythology and truth blurred. My parents were German Jews who narrowly escaped to this country during the War, and in the re-building of their lives as Americans, they told their youngest child—me—an edited version of their past.
In hindsight, it is probably why I became a journalist. As a reporter and editor, I spent more than twenty years digging up other people's stories and trying to fit together the pieces of their lives—all the while, ignoring the puzzle of my own life.
After being a reporter for Newsweek, editing six magazines, writing one memoir and two novels, I only recently began looking into my past.
The first thing I discovered was that my great uncle did NOT invent Monopoly. An advertising man, who came from Lithuania to this country as a young boy, during the Depression he figured out how to make jigsaw puzzles out of cardboard and sold them for fifteen cents a week.
The puzzles became a sensation. Time magazine dubbed him "America's Puzzle King," and he made millions. He was married to a beautiful woman, a German Jew, who had come to America as a young girl and was my mother's aunt.
What else didn't I know?
The more I dug, the more I learned about the heroic efforts of the people who helped my parents escape Germany.
My novel, The Puzzle King, is based on these truths. All of that family is gone now, which is why I chose to tell their story as fiction. My novel takes place between 1892 and 1936 and goes back and forth between New York and a small town in Germany. We see the burgeoning anti-Semitism on both sides of the ocean, and the intransigence of German Jews who refused to comprehend what was happening to them.
Dire times make for unlikely heroes. The Puzzle King is about how one person saved hundreds of lives assuring a future for them and the children who came after them. I am one of those children. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
Carter mines her family history in this underwhelming novel that examines the lives and loves of Jewish immigrants in early 20th-century New York. Nine-year-old Simon Phelps is sent by his mother from Lithuania to America, where he grows up poor but ambitious on the Lower East Side. He meets German-born Flora Grossman, and their marriage and ascent into American success forms the linchpin for the familiar tales of immigrants vacillating between the New World and the Old. The interwoven stories of Flora and her sisters—Seema, the kept mistress of a WASP banker, and the somber Margot, who endures an austere life in post-WWI Germany—highlight the different paths for German-Jewish women. Meanwhile, Simon’s booming career in the advertising world is tempered by the grief he feels as he searches for his lost family, though his success enables him to plan a bold mission of salvation. Unfortunately, the narrative, while admirable in scope, feels too beholden to its source material, with the remote, speculative tone making this often feel more like a historian’s work than a novelist’s.
Publishers Weekly
When is a person a hero or just a dedicated family member? Carter tackles this question in her latest novel, a moving tale of two ordinary young people sent to America from Europe by their respective families in hopes that they would have a better life than their families can offer. Who could predict that Flora and Simon would not only meet and fall in love but that Simon would become wealthy as America's Puzzle King? Who could predict that the wife of the Puzzle King would dare to go to Hitler's Germany, bribe the American consulate, and sign affidavits of support for hundreds of German Jews? Verdict: Drawing on family legends (no one could invent a story line like this one), Carter deftly paints a panoramic portrait of life during the turbulent 1930s. The pieces of her gripping story fit together so neatly that they cannot easily be torn apart. Highly recommended. —Marika Zemke, Commerce Twp. Community Library, MI
Library Journal
Successful American immigrants rescue hundreds of Jews from Nazi Germany in this latest from memoirist and novelist Carter. The bulk of the novel traces the pre-1930s history of Carter's hero and heroine. In 1892, his mother sends nine-year-old Simon Phelps to America from Vilna, Lithuania. Despite years of searching, he never hears from her or the rest of his family again. A bright, artistic boy, he quickly becomes successful in lithography, window dressing and then in advertising. In 1909 he falls in love with Flora Grossman, who has come to America with her sister Seema. Unlike Simon, Flora remains in touch with her mother and younger sister in Germany. Flora and Simon marry and live happily; his thoughtful reserve and strong convictions compliment her more carefree, easygoing, conventional nature. They enjoy increasing financial success and contentment, marred only by their inability to have children. Meanwhile, sexy, complex Seema, who unlike Flora always felt rejected by their mother, breaks with tradition, allowing herself to be kept by a married non-Jew with anti-Semitic tendencies. When their mother dies in 1928, Flora and Seema return to Germany. Seema feels an unexpected connection to their homeland and decides to remain. She falls in love with a journalist who convinces her to convert to Catholicism to escape being branded a Jew. In the early '30s, Simon and Flora go to Europe with money and documents he has prepared to get as many family members out of Germany as possible. Carter gives disappointingly short shrift to this final act of the drama. Sentimental and rather slow.
Kirkus Reviews
top of page
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Puzzle King:
1. Talk about what it was like for nine-year-old Simon Phelps—or what it would be like for any young child—to leave his family and emigrate to a land on the opposite side of the world. Talk also about the reasons Simon was sent by his mother. What was he leaving behind, and what did she hope for him?
2. Consider Flora and Seema's experiences in emigrating: how similar were their experiences to Simon's?
3. In what way are Flora and Seema different from one another? Why does Seema form a relationship with an American who evinces anti-semitism?
4. Simon and Flora have differing personalities: he is artistic and serious—intense in his convictions; she more lighthearted and conventional. What makes their marriage work?
5. When the two sisters return to Germany on their mother's death, in what way does Seema feel reconnected to her homeland? What is life like for their younger sister, Margot, in post-World War I Germany?
6. Why did so many German Jews choose not to leave Europe at the onset of the Nazi takeover? Why did they not comprehend what was happening in their country? Is their lack of foresight simply part of human nature?
7. Discuss the heroism on the part of Simon and Flora as they travel to Germany in 1936 in an attempt to save the lives of family members.
8. What other books have you read about either the immigrant experience in the late-19th / early-20th centuries or the experience of European Jews during the Holocaust? Does your knowledge from any of those works have bearing on your reading or understanding of The Puzzle King?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page