Find Me Again: A Rebbeca Temple Mystery

Lisa Arsenault is an elementary-school teacher in Ajax, Ontario.

Featuring Polish Holocaust survivors and their families, this murder
mystery moves around in time and is told from several viewpoints. In
1979 Toronto, Rebecca is confronted with mysterious and dangerous
strangers from her mother-in-law’s, Sarah’s, past in Krakow. The
action switches to 1940 Poland and the events leading up to Sarah’s
deportation and incarceration in Nazi death camps—events told from
Sarah’s point of view. A third protagonist, Michael, is writing a book
about 18th-century Poland and contributes to the plot through both his
own actions and chapters of his historical novel that are interspersed
throughout the book.

It’s a difficult feat to pull off the two-books-in-one format, but
Find Me Again succeeds. The author is particularly good at conjuring up
the atmosphere, culture, mores, and politics of 250 years ago and
comparing and contrasting them with the attitudes and lifestyle of
modern times. Authentic voices are given to the characters who populate
the pages of the novel within the novel. A sense of immediacy is
conveyed by having them speak in the first person.

Similarly, the writing style transporting Sarah back, in her mind,
through time to Krakow during the war is very powerful. She drifts like
a wraith through the deserted, darkened streets—searching for what, we
don’t initially know. Warsh is adept at changing her writing style to
accommodate diverse circumstances. The heightened sensory style and
long, evocative sentences of the Sarah scenes contrast powerfully with
the short, choppy, fear-charged narrative describing the attempt on
Rebecca’s life.

Find Me Again is a good old-fashioned mystery and a historical novel
rolled into one.