One of this book's great strengths is writer Melissa Müller's ability to situate Anne Frank's famous diary within a larger historical and biographical context--more than half of it covers the years before the Franks went into hiding. Equally important is her discovery of the existence of five pages Otto Frank removed from his daughter's original diary and entrusted shortly before his death to Cor Sujik, international director of New York's Anne Frank Center. Sujik showed these pages to Müller, who accurately notes in the biography that they "enhance our understanding of the diary's author."
Until now, readers have known the eight people sequestered in the secret annex through Anne's eyes only. Müller reveals everyone's correct names (they were changed for the diary's publication) and tactfully corrects a teenager's skewed perceptions when necessary, always reminding us of the claustrophobic closeness and material deprivation that sometimes fueled Anne's uncharitable comments about, for example, the middle-aged dentist with whom she was forced to share a room. Müller also plausibly identifies the Dutch informant who betrayed the secret annex's inhabitants to the Gestapo. Horror suffuses Müller's grim recap of the Franks' ordeal at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, though there is some comfort in survivors' reports that Anne, her mother, and her older sister formed "an inseparable trio," all former quarrels forgotten in their fierce struggle to save each other. They failed, and Müller does not gloss over that tragedy. But she reminds us that, "In the end, the Nazi terror could not silence Anne's voice, which still rings out for all of us."
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