The Disappearance of Daniel Klein
Cynthia Hagan
Author Bio
Cynthia Hagan began her writing career in the film industry and is an optioned and commissioned screenwriter. She is also a documentarian and a credited story researcher/story consultant on the World War II documentary, Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Conspiracy. Her original screenplay, The Disappearance of Daniel Klein, on which her first novel is based, was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a Nicholl Fellowship top 50 screenplay in 2013. The author holds a PhD in psychology and has worked as both a forensic psychologist and child psychologist, a background which informs her work.
Description
The Disappearance of Daniel Klein chronicles the story of a boy magician with mismatched eyes (one blue, one green) who captures the dark interest of a Nazi research doctor. Despite growing up as a Jewish orphan in the midst of World War II, Daniel Klein still believes in the miraculous and the good and all that comes with it. He finds solace in magic, spends his afternoon hours pulling silver coins from the air and turning white handkerchiefs red, proving again and again that things are not always as they seem. But on one night, with one little boy decision, Daniel is put on a trajectory that threatens not only his resilient spirit but also his very life. When he and his friends sneak out of their orphanage to retrieve a family heirloom Daniel left behind while playing that day, they unknowingly give up their only chance to avoid deportation to a concentration camp. At that camp resides Karl Vendel, an awkward and obsessive Nazi research doctor who takes a dark interest in Daniel’s rare eye color. As Daniel struggles to cope with the conditions of the camp and the impending loss of his sight, he finds himself increasingly confused, unable to separate imagination from reality. And as he begins to witness miraculous, near otherworldly things, Daniel wonders if he is losing his sanity or if something from the beyond is trying to help him survive. Penned by award winning screenwriter, Cynthia Hagan, The Disappearance of Daniel Klein is a story about the bonds of childhood friendship and the transcending power of belief. More, it begs us to ask the question… is there life beyond life as we know it?
Book excerpt
Daniel woke in the middle of the night to the lingering thought of his mother. He felt as though she had crept into his bunk and had nudged him, whispered, “Wake up Daniel,” with that voice she only used while the rest of the world was still sleeping. He loved that part of her illness, those bouts of impulsivity and passion, that white hot flame that clicked on without warning, that burned with ideas so stirring that she couldn’t bear to keep them inside of her until dawn.
Some nights, her notions were of simple things, of wet cornstarch and dry flour dust and she and Daniel would butter them into sailboat shaped crusts and set them adrift in soapy sink water. Other nights, she thought of poetry, and they’d paint those words across the sitting room walls while she spoke of discovery and of science and how solutions, though they came to her, no one would listen. “I’ll listen,” he would say and she’d smile wide, full to the brim of that wandering thing that made her so beautiful. He loved all of those nights, but there was that left him with the most clean and enduring vision of his mother. Of her occipital bone wrinkles and her soft brown hair. Of her bleached burlap apron and how it clung to the slim of her waist. It was the October night when they built a house together.
She had roused him from the dark, led him out into the yard while he was still staggering and unbinding the sleep from his eyes. The night was a mix of wind and dry rattling leaves and a cold but breathable air. She took him by the shoulders, placed him where he could best see the work she had done. There were piles of scrap wood on the lawn, sticks driven like posts into the ground, blue strings of crocheting yarn hanging loose between them. “Those are where the rooms will be,” she had said, leading him further. “This one is your bedroom, and the windows will be here. There will be big blank pieces of glass with no panes so that when the sun rises, you’ll be able to see the gold city walls of the kingdom from here.”
“What kingdom?” He had asked. She never answered. They spent the rest of the night adding walls of hanging paper and a roof of stringed lights. Then they sat blanketed, drinking cold cider, not talking, and waiting for the sun to lift above the tree line, for that gold city to rise up and appear. When dawn came, Daniel did, in fact, see something. A light that spread and turned sharp gold in color, took on the layered silhouette of high city walls, and of gates and of flat top roofs that spanned over a great distance. After the sun had crowned, there was no denying it. A gold city sat in the morning sky. He turned to her, wanted to say a particular thing so badly, though now he couldn’t recall what it had been. All he could remember was that she had interrupted him, and that with a bold and emotionless look in her eyes, she said, “Your father and I, we’ll both die on a Tuesday.”
This was the dark side of her. The same impulsively and passion she built you up with, she often ripped right from under your feet. She could destroy, leave holes and scars, markers of the places you’d gone with her.
Author Website
http://cynthiahagan.com