Pages from Paradise
Recent history''s impact on the tranquil island of Mallorca and some of its people, as described on Andrea Mascaró's diary pages
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About the Book
The author and his wife Sherrill lived in Petaluma CA, where the author worked in the local high school. A Spanish boy and girl, Diana Sureda, join the student body as exchange students. They come from Mallorca, where the author spent part of his teen years. Diana discovers, her recently deceased great-aunt Andrea was the author’s girl friend in Spain in the 1930’s. She gives the author photo copies of Andrea’s diary pages covering the periods from that time until the late 1980’s. Kuttner translates these diary pages.
Andrea Mascaró is part of the large Mallorcan “chueta” community, whose Jewish ancestors during the Inquisition converted to Catholicism. During the Civil War Andrea works with the underground and afterward establishes a beach wear workshop. She meets Max, a Sephardic Jew from Turkey and marries him. They have two children. Her son’s best friend is a Palestinian. Israel’s religious court, Bet Din, discourages Andrea from officially converting to Judaism, but she rears both of her children as Jews, who marry traditional Jewish mates.
On an excursion to a Balearic islet, Max suffers a fatal heart attack. In her grief, Andrea neglects herself and dies soon afterward. She and Max helped create a viable Jewish community on Mallorca.
About the Author
Walter Kuttner was born in 1915 in Northwest Germany into a family of non-observant Jews. When Hitler assumed power in 1933 he lived with his British uncle’s family in a Western suburb of Berlin. The uncle and his family moved to Spain in 1933. Walter joined them in 1934, when race laws closed universities to Jews. The family opened a stationery store, where he worked. He met the young woman called Andrea Mascaró in the novel. . The outbreak of Spain’s Civil War in 1936 caused the Kuttner family to be evacuated. . Walter and “Andrea” continued their correspondence for ten months. Kuttner received his visa to the United States and immigrated. He settled in Texas, in 1941 married his first wife Eve, joining the U.S.Army and serving in Europe. The Kuttners had one son Charles, now a physician in Oregon. Kuttner’s first wife died in 1970 and he married Sherrill Kuttner in 1971. They retired to Northern California in 1980.