They are raucous, boozy bunches who, at the end of the day, are selfless and heroic. The group of characters that surround the fictional Fry is also notable. Yad Vashem in Israel honored him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1994. The real Varian Fry was also a remarkable man-an Ivy League WASP who apparently did not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. Though Orringer was taken to task by the novelist Cynthia Ozick in The New York Times for speculating about Fry’s homosexuality, she found ample evidence published in various biographies and offered by Fry’s son that despite being married twice and fathering three children, Fry was unequivocally gay. In the middle of this maelstrom is Fry’s fictional relationship with Elliot Grant the two were Harvard classmates in the 1920s. Her research is solid-for example, she meticulously traces the escape routes that people took through the Pyrenees on foot, by flight from Lisbon and by ship from Marseilles to Martinique. Clocking in at over 500 pages, Orringer tell us a story that is ambitious in its scope.
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