Introduction

“Jillian Cantor’s In Another Time is a love song to the most powerful of all human emotions: hope. It is the story of Max and Hanna, two star-crossed lovers fighting to stay together during an impossible moment in history. It is gripping, mysterious, romantic, and altogether unique. I was enchanted by this beautiful, heartbreaking novel.” — Ariel Lawhon, author of I Was Anastasia

A sweeping historical novel that spans Germany, England, and the United States and follows a young couple torn apart by circumstance leading up to World War II—and the family secret that may prove to be the means for survival.

1931, Germany. Bookshop owner Max Beissinger meets Hanna Ginsberg, a budding concert violinist, and immediately he feels a powerful chemistry between them. It isn’t long before they fall in love and begin making plans for the future. As their love affair unfolds over the next five years, the climate drastically changes in Germany as Hitler comes to power. Their love is tested with the new landscape and the realities of war, not the least of which is that Hanna is Jewish and Max is not. But unbeknownst to Hanna is the fact that Max has a secret, which causes him to leave for months at a time—a secret that Max is convinced will help him save Hanna if Germany becomes too dangerous for her because of her religion. 

In 1946, Hanna Ginsberg awakens in a field outside of Berlin. Disoriented and afraid, she has no memory of the past ten years and no idea what has happened to Max. With no information as to Max’s whereabouts—or if he is even still alive—she decides to move to London to live with her sister while she gets her bearings. Even without an orchestra to play in, she throws herself completely into her music to keep alive her lifelong dream of becoming a concert violinist. But the music also serves as a balm to heal her deeply wounded heart and she eventually gets the opening she long hoped for. Even so, as the days, months, and years pass, taking her from London to Paris to Vienna to America, she continues to be haunted by her forgotten past, and the fate of the only man she has ever loved and cannot forget.

Told in alternating viewpoints—Max in the years leading up to WWII, and Hanna in the ten years after—In Another Time is a beautiful novel about love and survival, passion and music, across time and continents.

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Excerpt

Prologue
Hanna, 1958
I haven’t told Stuart the whole truth about where I came from. Because for one thing, he wouldn’t understand. How could he, when I don’t really understand it for myself? And for another, even if I did tell him, he wouldn’t believe it. He would frown, and his blue eyes would soften, crinkle just around the edges, illuminating both his age and his kindness. Oh, my dear, he might say, as Sister Louisa once did, after I’d stumbled into the last-standing church in Gutenstat, freezing cold and sick with thirst and hunger. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. The book begins with a quotation about time and ends with Hanna thinking, The time is everything in this piece, in this concert. In Berlin. Discuss the importance of time and how it is used in multiple ways throughout the novel. Why do you think the novel is called In Another Time?

2. Max’s story begins when he first meets Hanna and ends when he believes he’s lost her, but Hanna’s story both begins and ends with her violin. Whose story is this: Hanna’s, Max’s, or both? Is this a love story? Whose love story is it?

3. The novel moves back and forth in time between prewar Germany and postwar Europe. In Berlin in 1933, Max thinks, The city was as it always had been—busy . . . Everything appeared oddly the same . . . except for the Nazi flags hanging up in storefronts. In 1946 London Hanna thinks, I’d . . . gotten used to the sight of missing and bombed buildings, so that I barely even noticed the piles of rubble and ash anymore, tucked in among the beauty and the splendor of what still stood in the West End. Compare and contrast prewar Germany and postwar Europe as settings. How do the conditions in both affect Hanna’s and Max’s lives and their relationships?

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