“This is a fascinating story of thwarted love, longing, and the travails of one woman and one family within the broader context of war and persecution.”
Starred review, Booklist
“This is a worthy testament to how war and displacement conspire against personal happiness.”
Publisher’s Weekly
“This is a home run.”
Geoffrey Jennings, Rainy Day Books
“This is a poetic story of undying love full of insight and honesty that truly crosses the borders of time.”
Dan’s Hamptons
“…one of the most poignant love-lost, love-found stories I have ever read, with an ending that Hollywood wouldn’t dare.”
Robert MacNeil, Journalist-Author
“…the listener may forget this is a work of nonfiction—so engrossing is its story and so vividly is it told.”
AudioFile
“This is a true story. That simple statement will seem remarkable to you once you have read this book.”
Cokie Roberts, NPR and ABC News analyst and author
“Crossing the Borders of Time … is a panoramic work of nonfiction that I believe Hemingway would have been proud to put his name on.”
David M. Kinchen, HuntingtonNews.Net
“Maitland is a brilliant reporter who knows what questions to ask and how to get her story. Written with the precision of a historian, the result is a work I could not put down and scarcely wanted to end.”
Michael Berenbaum, founding director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
“This is a touching story about the odd collision of fate and will. A poignantly rendered, impeccably researched tale of a rupture healed by time.”
Kirkus Reviews
“…one of those sweeping, epic, romantic novels that seems tailor-made for the Oscars and a long summer afternoon. Except it’s real!”
Bruce Feiler, best-selling author of Walking the Bible and Abraham
“An absorbing true account of romance, resilience, and survival…”
The Daily Beast
“The knock on the door that first pulled us into Maitland’s story leads to improbable and intriguing contemporary connections, some built on secrets not yet revealed. … I wait for Maitland’s sequel.”
Susan Roche, The Washington Independent Review of Books
“This riveting memoir was an unusual survival story of both loss and love… The ending warms the reader’s heart, and I highly recommend this true story.”
Cathy Becker, Cleveland Jewish News
“Maitland has researched this story exhaustively and told it with great sensitivity, in a beautifully evocative style…”
St. Louis Jewish Light
“How the small flame of an undying love can illuminate the darkness of a tragic era. This elegantly told story is for everyone.”
James Carroll, New York Times best-selling author of Jerusalem, Jerusalem and Constantine’s Sword
“Informative and electrifying…grips the reader’s attention.”
Indianapolis Jewish Post & Opinion
“The stuff of novels and film.”
Steve Goddard, HistoryWire.com
“As gripping as any fiction… Readers hoping for a happy ending will be rewarded by a conclusion any novelist would have been happy to create.”
Cheryl Krocker McKeon, Shelf Awareness for Readers
“A beautiful story.”
Washington Post
Separated by war and her family’s disapproval, the young lovers—Janine and Roland—lose each other for fifty years. It is a testimony to both Maitland’s investigative skills and her devotion to her mother that she successfully traced the lost Roland and was able to reunite him with Janine. Unlike so many stories of love during wartime, theirs has a happy ending.
Leslie Maitland is a writer and former award-winning reporter and national correspondent for The New York Times who specialized in legal affairs and investigative reporting. After breaking stories on the FBI’s undercover “Abscam” inquiry into corruption in Congress, she moved to The New York Times Washington Bureau to cover the Justice Department. Among other projects since leaving The Times, she began extensive research for this nonfiction book, including five reporting trips to Europe, one to Cuba, and another to Canada. A graduate of the University of Chicago and the Harvard Divinity School, she has regularly appeared on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR to discuss literature. The mother of a son and daughter, Maitland lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and a 12-pound Cockapoo named Thisbe. She has presented illustrated programs on Crossing the Borders of Time to audiences nationwide and connects with book clubs over Skype.