Love & Treasure

A dispirited woman, after quitting her job and divorcing her cheating husband, retreats to Maine to visit her beloved Grandpa Jack, only to be given a remarkable mission: return the locket he stole from a warehouse during World War 2, a warehouse full of valuables seized from Hungarian Jews. As Natalie explores this untold chapter of her grandfather’s life, Jack hopes that the journey will kickstart a wonderful new phase of her life.

Love & Treasure is more like three overlapping novellas, each centered around the locket and those who have held it. The first section, Jack’s story, is heavy and haunting, a tale of love versus duty. The novel loses a bit of steam when the second section takes over, becoming a mystery as Natalie pursues the story behind the locket. But again, the momentum does pick up, even if it never reaches the emotional heights of the first section. The third section, which reveals the story of the photograph within the locket, is stranger still, mixing comical overtones of outmoded psychiatric ideas with the very serious weight of familial obligation.

While never feeling truly disjointed, Love & Treasure is a curious reading experience, ambitious in scope yet personal in execution.