Hitler and My Mother-in-Law: A Memoir

Novelist Svoboda follows up Dog on Fire with a ruminative, wide-ranging biography of her mother-in-law, WWII correspondent Patricia Lochridge Hartwell (1916–1998). The first woman to work in news at CBS radio, Pat was also the civilian military contractor—a propagandist employed by the U.S. Office for War Information—“point[ing] to a pile of ashes” in a 1945 photograph taken as proof of Hitler’s demise. Or so goes Svoboda’s memory of Pat’s career. Svoboda and her current husband, who vividly recollect seeing the photograph in Pat’s possession, spend the entirety of the book searching for it, as it becomes increasingly clear that there’s no historical record of such a photo ever existing. Pat, a known fabulist, but also a dogged reporter according to family lore (“ ‘Mom,’ says my husband, ‘didn’t like answering questions. She was good at asking them’ ”), emerges as a complex cipher for the fine line between propaganda and journalism, the ways in which professional women’s careers can be derailed by the men in their lives (with ample parallels between Pat’s abusive second husband and Svoboda’s difficult first husband), and the unresolved trauma of WWII (Pat witnessed the liberation of Dachau, an experience which did lasting emotional damage, Svoboda implies). Canny, meandering, and revelatory, it’s a remarkable family memoir that stretches across major developments of the 20th century while questioning how the truth gets produced. Readers will be riveted. (Oct.)