When We Meet Again

Emily Emerson, a thirty-six-year-old freelance journalist in Orlando, Florida, has just lost her syndicated relationship column and carries deep personal wounds. Her father, Victor Emerson, abandoned her family when she was eleven; her mother died when Emily was eighteen. In the aftermath of that loss, Emily gave birth to a daughter fathered by her high school boyfriend, Nick Walker, and gave the baby up for adoption without telling Nick. She has searched adoption websites for years, hoping her daughter might look for her. When a mysterious package arrives from an art gallery in Munich, Germany, Emily's life takes an unexpected turn.

Inside the package is a watercolor of a young woman in a red dress standing in a field beneath a violet sky, accompanied by an unsigned note claiming that Emily's grandfather "never stopped loving her. Margaret was the love of his life" (10). Emily recognizes the woman as a younger version of her grandmother Margaret, who died earlier that year. She knows almost nothing about her grandfather, only that he vanished before her father was born. She reluctantly contacts Victor, who confirms the painting matches a scene Margaret described near the end of her life: the day she first met the man she loved.

Emily's search leads her to Jeremiah Beltrain, an eighty-three-year-old man who grew up alongside Margaret in Belle Creek, a small farming town near Lake Okeechobee. Jeremiah reveals that during World War II, German prisoners of war were brought to the United States to fill labor shortages. In Belle Creek, German POWs harvested sugarcane alongside local workers. Margaret, who had dropped out of school to work on her family's farm, fell in love with one of these prisoners, a young soldier named Peter Dahler. After the war ended, Peter was shipped back to Europe. Jeremiah shows Emily a letter Peter supposedly sent in December 1945, declaring their relationship a mistake. Margaret's family disowned her for the pregnancy, and she left Belle Creek with her newborn son.

The novel alternates between Emily's present-day investigation and historical chapters depicting Peter's experience. Peter, from the Bavarian town of Holzkirchen, served in the Afrika Korps in North Africa, where his best friend Otto died in his arms. Captured and brought to Florida, Peter found unexpected beauty in the violet dawn skies over the sugarcane fields, where he first saw Margaret walking in a red dress. Their connection deepened over stolen conversations, and they bonded over a shared love of the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. On Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945, Peter slips out of camp to be with Margaret, and they spend the only night they will ever share.

Emily visits Julie Candless, the granddaughter of Margaret's sister Louise, who gives Emily three love letters Peter wrote to Margaret from a prison camp in England in 1946 and 1947. Louise had intercepted the letters and never delivered them. Since Peter was professing his love over a year after the supposed rejection letter, Emily realizes someone in Germany must have forged it.

Emily and Victor travel to Munich, where they find Peter's younger brother, Franz Dahler. Franz reveals that their father, a fervent Nazi, burned Margaret's letters, never told Peter about the pregnancy, and drove Peter from the family when he returned from England in late 1947. Emily and Victor also trace the painting's path to the Ponce Gallery in Atlanta, the city where Emily grew up.

Throughout the search, Emily's relationship with Victor slowly thaws. He apologizes for abandoning her, and Emily begins to recognize how his absence shaped her own pattern of running from those she loves. In Atlanta, she visits Nick at his advertising agency and confesses about their daughter. Nick is devastated, but he later sends a text: "I forgive you" (249). Emily writes him a letter confessing she never stopped loving him, expecting nothing in return. Victor then reveals he has liver cancer and that the treatments have failed.

The critical breakthrough comes when a painter named Arno Fromm contacts Emily. Known by the nickname Maus, Fromm was Peter's closest friend during and after the war. He takes Emily to a warehouse in Atlanta filled with hundreds of paintings of her grandmother, created over decades. This was Peter's private studio, the place where he spent his life painting the woman he believed was dead. After the war, Peter had traveled to Belle Creek to find Margaret, but Louise told him that Margaret and the baby had both died in childbirth. Devastated, Peter settled in Florida and poured his grief into painting. Fromm reveals that Peter changed his name to Ralph Gaertner, becoming a celebrated realist painter. He took the surname in honor of his dead friend Otto and the first name from Emerson. In 1963, Peter attended the March on Washington and believed he spotted Margaret in the crowd but could not reach her; Margaret had indeed been there with Victor. The sighting inspired Peter's most famous paintings and his decision to include a mysterious female silhouette in all his work. Known to art critics as "the Gaertner Angel," the figure was always Margaret.

Emily meets Peter's widow, Ingrid Gaertner, who shares the final revelation. On Valentine's Day, the day before Peter died, Louise visited him and confessed that Margaret had survived and their son had lived. Peter called Margaret's nursing home that night, and the two spoke for the first time in seventy years. They shared their unbroken love and a striking coincidence: Margaret had taken the last name Emerson after the poet, while Peter had chosen Ralph as his first name for the same reason. Neither had known the other was alive. Peter died the following afternoon; Margaret died earlier that same day. Ingrid gives Emily Peter's final painting, a watercolor of the four of them together under a violet sky, completed in his last hours.

Emily shares the full story with Victor, who is moved to learn his father never abandoned him. Victor dies just before Christmas. Three months later, an eighteen-year-old named Megan Clark appears at Emily's door holding a letter Victor wrote before his death. He had hired a private investigator, found Emily's daughter, and written to tell Megan that her biological mother had loved her every day. Megan, headed to college to study painting, notices the Gaertner painting on Emily's wall and recognizes the style, a sign that art runs in her blood.

That evening, Nick arrives at Emily's doorstep. He has received her letter, reveals he is now divorced, and asks if they might try again. Emily invites him inside, and the novel closes with her recognizing the future ahead as full of promise, as luminous as the violet skies her grandfather spent a lifetime painting.