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ONCE UPON A TIME
by Barbara Fradkin
RendezVous Press, October 2002
264 pages
$10.95
ISBN: 0929141849


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Ruth and Eugene Walker, a pair of 80-somethings, have retired to a cabin in rural Ontario. Ruth has a doctor's appointment, so she drives for the two hours it takes to get to the clinic. Eugene chooses to remain in the car while Ruth goes inside. Less than two hours later, she finds her husband dead in the snow. The coroner rules it an accidental death.

Ontario Provincial Police major crimes investigator, Inspector Michael Green, doesn't think Walker died accidentally. He has a strange mark on his forehead which the ME passes off as having happened when he hit the side view mirror as he fell in the snow.

Ruth is staying with her daughter and son-in-law, Don and Margaret Reid. She is an elegant old lady with a posh British accent. She tells Green about how she met her husband just after the war. He remembered nothing of his previous life. All he had was a tool chest with the name of a town in Poland engraved into it. But he apparently spoke no Polish. He did understand German, however.

Much remains unsaid, and despite his superior wanting to close the case as an accident, Green, himself the offspring of holocaust survivors, searches for the real identity of a man who may have been a prisoner, or a Nazi. While attempting to solve the case, Green learns more about his parents and their lives in the camps. The story of Eugene Walker brings him closer to his father, who is living in an assisted living apartment because he is unable to care for himself any longer.

ONCE UPON A TIME hit the streets over two years ago, but with the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it deserves another look. If Fradkin were an American, her books would be best sellers.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, January 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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