As many of you know, I have spent the most of the last decade writing a book about the art uprooted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. About two years ago, Bloomsbury Press bought the unfinished manuscript. I finished the book with the assistance of Abigail Wilentz, and it will be published on October 16, 2025. You can preorder it here.

To accompany the book, next week I am launching a Substack called Plunder and Survival: Stories of Nazi-Uprooted Art. This biweekly newsletter will showcase tales that, for a variety of reasons, didn’t fit into the book, but were too good to abandon. If you enjoy the short essays I publish on this blog, you might also enjoy the newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Next week, I am returning to Echo Lake—unfortunately without Viva, my miniature poodle. She was fifteen and died last spring. Viva was born in Brazil and was a glamorous show dog during her first 3½ years. Luck would have it that she retired to our modest “pet home” thereafter. We changed her name from the Portuguese Genevia to Viva, but she never listened to her new name, even though we engaged an expensive trainer to teach her. 

I will miss Viva sitting uncomplainingly in the car’s backseat during the 463 miles separating my two abodes. When she finally got to Echo Lake, she always looked around and seemed a bit disoriented, but only for a moment. Then she would race back and forth down the long approach to the camp—a favorite exertion she would continue all summer long.

I also miss Viva following me around the house as if she were my shadow, settling down with me at every destination, whether it was my desk, the kitchen table, the dining room, the TV, or my bed. She always knew when she was coming out with me and when she had to stay home. As she grew older and slept more deeply, I would touch her slightly when I was about to relocate, telling her that “we” were going, and she would rouse herself. 

Only very young children and dogs proclaim so openly and forcefully that you are the center of their world! Edith, a former Maine neighbor, used to say: It is unfair that people and their best friends have such unequal lifespans.