The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank

Anne Frank's diary entry of February 16, 1944 records that Peter, a boy she first disliked and later loved, told her he would reinvent himself completely if he got out alive. This novel imagines that he does survive and grows into a man.

Peter van Pels arrives in America and passes as a Christian. In the boom years of the 1950s he builds a successful business and a happy love life. He lives entirely in the present and looks ahead, and he keeps his past hidden from everyone around him.

The disguise has a price. When The Diary of a Young Girl is published and acclaimed around the world, it brings back memories of the secret annex in Amsterdam that he cannot push down. The diary records his story as well as hers. Once those memories surface, his life begins to come apart.

This is historical fiction that reimagines a real person, drawing on extensive research into Peter van Pels and into the strange, disturbing afterlife the diary took on after Anne Frank's death. It is a serious, reflective novel about remembering and forgetting, and about a past that cannot be escaped. A reading group guide is included.