Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor is a 1938 historical fiction novel that tells the story of two friends and business partners, Max Eisenstein and Martin Schulze, who drift apart after Martin moves back to Germany in the years leading up to the rise of the Nazi party. Told in the form of the pairs' letters, what follows is 69 pages of the pair's declining friendship as Max watches in horror as his friend slowly becomes taken over by distasteful and hate-filled ideology until ultimately it results in tragedy. 

Unfortunately, although written almost 83 years ago, Address Unknown has a tremendous amount of relevance in modern society. Sadly, families in the current day have to watch in horror as the ones they love and grew up with have changed to fit an ideological belief system that causes them to reject, attack, and condemn those they have known for years.

In fact, in the author note's, written by Taylor's son, his mother Katherine Taylor got the idea for the novel after seeing how friends who had arrived from a nazi-occupied nation treated friends they had known for years after returning to the United States. Stating that his mother wrote about an exchange that happened before the war. She remembered meeting old friends who had been close before their move back to Germany. Of their reaction, she states: 

"During their return to California, they met a dear friend of theirs on the street, a Jewish man they had known and been close to for many years. They did not speak to him. Instead, they turned their backs on him when he held his arms out to embrace them. How can such a thing happen? I wondered. What changed their hearts so? What steps brought them to such cruelty? These questions haunted me very much, and I could not forget them. It was hard to believe that these people whom I'd known and respected could fall victim to such poison." 

The primary interaction between the main characters of Martin and Max are the letters between them. Through these letters, you follow the destruction of a close friendship, as Martin slowly reflects the interaction that Taylor saw between her friends and what haunted her afterward. The story explores the minds of the men as Max desperately tries to reach out to his friend only to be coldly dismissed and despised by Martin, who comments and repeats rhetoric.

Address Unknown was written by the author to highlight how easily warped ideology can change good and intelligent people into those unrecognisable to their friends and family. While a short novel, it is a heartbreaking tale with an ending that leaves you with a weird sense of surprising satisfaction.