Manfred Theisen:  Adele Kurzweil's Suitcase

Spending the holidays in a fly-blown village in the South of France is not fifteen-year-old Mara’s idea of fun. But things change all of a sudden, when she finds a faded diary in the ramshackle house her parents intend to buy: It dates from 1942, and André, its keeper, tells about his love for Adele, a Jewish girl with wonderful eyes, who’s fled from the Nazis to the unoccupied zone and dreams of a life in freedom in America. Mara tells the house owner’s son about the diary she’s found, and together they plunge into the story of Adele’s life and of an unsolved crime. The more they learn about it, the deeper they fall under the spell of history - not forgetting the spell their mutual feelings have cast on each other.