Book Review: Marcel’s Letters

For someone who writes, I do not have beautiful handwriting. I don’t think anyone would read my writing if I had to write longhand. I don’t think anyone could. My husband routinely asks for translations of the grocery list. Once I was brave enough to read my own journals and I had a hard time deciphering much of what I wrote.

Perhaps that’s why Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate by Carolyn Porter was so interesting to me. The story begins with the letters she found in an antique store and bought because of the beauty of the script. She planned to someday design a font and thought the letters and their beautiful form may be the basis for it. They were in French, so she couldn’t read them.

Years later, when she decided to have one of the letters translated, the remarkable story of the man who signed the letters revealed itself. The letters were written during World War II. Porter would learn of a man and part of the war that had been hidden to many before.

A French Man in a German Work Camp

Porter learned that Marcel had been part of the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), or obligatory work service instituted by the Vichy government. The STO forced thousands of French men to fill the jobs left vacant in by German men fighting in the war. Marcel wrote the letters to his wife and three children living outside of Paris.