Letters Across the Sea is an account of Canadian history from the Great Depression until shortly after the end of World War II. Molly Ryan, a lass with an Irish background, has loved Max Dreyfus, a Jewish boy, since childhood. During the 1933 Christie Pits Riot in Toronto, the largest ethnic riot in Canadian history, Molly is attacked by an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer, but is rescued by Max. When her father sees her kiss Max, he starts to beat Max. A brick comes from nowhere, striking her father and giving him a brain injury, leaving him with permanent neurological deficits. The two families, who have gotten along well to this point, split in a dramatic fashion.
Max goes on to medical school while Molly achieves her goal of becoming a newspaper reporter. As Britain fights the Nazis, Canadians are drawn into the war as well with disastrous results. Max is held in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
Author Graham does a wonderful job dealing with the horrors of war, neither minimizing nor sensationalizing them, and brings light to the problems suffered by the soldiers who return: loss of limbs, blindness, PTSD, and emotional and psychological scarring.
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