Send for Me

Send for Me features some beautifully written passages, but the book is so brief and slight that it feels like sketches of a full novel, not a complete one. The chapters set in the late 1990's in particular fail to make much of an impression.

It's somewhat unusual for a Holocaust-themed novel to focus on the early days of Nazi Germany, when the country's Jews were just starting to lose their rights and emigration was still fairly easy. Fox captures the complex dynamics of Annelise's emotional state when she arrives in Milwaukee - relief that she is safe; alienation because everything is so strange; guilt about making a new life while her parents are still stuck in Germany; and fear for their lives. I only wish Fox had let us spend more time getting to know her and the other characters. Given the fact that the novel is based on her own family's history, I assume she had plenty of raw material to work with.