Author Description

In 1940, Itzak Lejdel, a teenage Jewish refugee from Brussels being held aboard a ship docked in Virginia, is one of 86 passengers whose visas have been rejected and are about to be returned to Nazi-occupied Europe. Itzak writes a series of pleas to Eleanor Roosevelt to intervene, filling his letters with colorful rumors about fellow passengers, endearing details about the movies he loves and his adolescent crushes, as well as harrowing tales about his family's flight from the Nazis.