Happy Birthday Anne Frank! / Book Review of Margot by Jillian Cantor

Happy Birthday Anne Frank! So many of your birthdays were stolen from you but your story and (what should have been) Margot's will never be forgotten. 

Providence: Today I finished reading Margot by Jillian Cantor and after I finished, I took a few minutes to search the internet for some background information on Anne Frank's family and time in hiding. I quickly realized that today, June 12th, would have been Anne Frank's 85th birthday! It was almost as if I was destined to read this book. 

Premise: It’s 1959 and Margie Franklin is in hiding. She’s good at the covert life because she’s been doing it since 1942. Margie Franklin is actually Margot Frank, sister of Anne Frank. She lives in fear in America, terrified of being made to relive the horrors she experienced during the Holocaust.

Plight of Margot: Margot is a completely fictional "what if" novel telling of what Margot Frank might have become if she had survived the Holocaust. Thus, a good amount of imagination and research were required on Cantor's behalf to make this storyline work and believable. I was definitely hooked. I remember reading about Anne Frank when I was a child but like many others, Margot was such a minor character in my mind that if someone had asked me if Anne had had any siblings, I might have said no. Now, I am hopelessly (and eternally) curious about Margot's own experience in the annex. Anne Frank's own diary tells us that Margot kept a diary, too, but now we know that it was never recovered. In this fictional account of the aftermath of Margot's holocaust experiences, Margot deals with PTSD (although undiagnosed in the 1950s), issues of her religious identity, survivor shame, loss, and so many other harrowing traumas. 

There are many pages in which I could not believe that Margot/Margie had not yet cracked from her tortuous memories which only intensified as she constantly sought to hide her true identity. She encounters painful flashbacks that cause the reader to sympathize and mourn her multitudinous losses. There were a few pages where I teared up, realizing that for the Jews that survived the Holocaust, another journey, a journey of healing and to wholeness, was still ahead of them. 

Praise: When I was not reading this story, I was Googling the lives of the Franks to refresh my mind of their story. A good historical fiction novel should do just that: cause the reader to become newly interested in what actually happened in the time period in which the novel takes place (or what the novel refers back to, as is the pattern of this novel). 

Predicament: I previously mentioned that the author, Jillian Cantor, did an exceptional job researching the Franks and making this unusual storyline work. However, there is one thing that bothered me. Back in the annex, Margot tells us that she and Peter had planned to meet in Philadelphia after the war. However, the way that Margot gets to Philadelphia is too coincidental. After she escapes from Auschwitz, Margot eventually resides with a family friend named Eduard. Eduard has a sister and brother-in-law who live in Philadelphia who agree to take in Margot. It is there upon her arrival that Margot becomes Margie. Perhaps minor to most, but the coincidence of Eduard's sister living in the same city where Margot planned to meet Peter irked me.  

I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction but if I can get my hands on more books like this, I would move historical fiction up on my list of preferred genres to read. If historical fiction is your thing and you have not yet read Margot, I really don't know what you're waiting for. Go get it and leave me a suggestion for another historical fiction book that I should consider reading.