Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate
Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate book cover

Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate

Hardcover – June 6, 2017

by
Price
$15.99
Format
Hardcover
Pages
352
Publisher
Skyhorse
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1510719330
Dimensions
6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
Weight
1.23 pounds

Description

“ Marcel’s Letters deftly portrays how a curiosity can grow into a search, and the search into an obsession. Having developed a profound sense of responsibility for one man’s lost history, Carolyn Porter follows the clues scattered in his letters to his family. Her story bursts with the excitement of discovery and culminates with the indescribable honor of returning fragments of a forgotten history to the people they were meant for.” —Glenn Kurtz, author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film "Carolyn Porter takes us on her offbeat quest to solve a transatlantic history mystery and unearths an intriguing pocket of our past along the way." —Megan Smolenyak, author of Who Do You Think You Are? The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History "Quirky, heartfelt, and compulsively readable. Marcel's Letters is an inventive combination of memoir and amateur historical sleuthing. An unforgettable story." —Theresa Kaminski, author of Angels of the Underground "We pick a font hoping it says something about us: that we are creative, intellectual, or have business know-how. But what happens when a font picks a graphic designer and turns her world upside down and inside out? In Marcel's Letters , Carolyn rescues one man's legacy, and ultimately gifts us with her own." —Elizabeth Rynecki, author of Chasing Portraits In Marcel's Letters Carolyn Porter has plucked a powerful story from the recesses of history. After purchasing a trove of letters because of their elegant script, Porter embarked on a quest to solve the mystery of their authorship and in so doing embarks on a historical awakening of her own." —Cathryn J. Prince, author of American Daredevil: The Extraordinary Life of Richard Halliburton, the World’s First Celebrity Travel Writer " Marcel’s Letters is a gripping page-turner about one type designer’s efforts to uncover (and recover) the destiny of a French forced laborer during Word War II." —Yves Peters, type writer and producer for Type Network "Fascinated by the handwriting, Carolyn Porter’s chance purchase of a few letters led her to a remarkable adventure in font design, research to understand the wartime separation of a father from his wife and children, and a quest to uncover Marcel’s fate in the Second World War and that of his family. Marcel’s Letters tells a compelling story of romance, perseverance, and discovery." —Professor Kenneth Mouré, historian of modern France, University of Alberta "It's a pleasure to read Porter's romantic dive into the depths of the lost art of letter writing and contained worlds. Porter and Marcel both ask their readers to slow down, look closer, and let passion persist, even if one is alone on a soulful search. The soul, Porter seems to say, isn't seen through the eyes or the hands—no, it's in the handwriting." — Star Tribune (Minneapolis) "Porter's captivating memoir describes her journey to find answers, noting how her fascination with Marcel proved infectious as she faces obstacle after obstacle and enlists the help of experts to discover the fate that awaited him. . . As impressive as her detective work is, it is Marcel and his letters—real, honest, heartfelt, and brave—that are undoubtedly the star of this marvelous book." — Booklist , starred review "[A] tribute to the power of curiosity." — Growler magazine "[An] intriguing memoir from a diligent researcher." — Kirkus Reviews "An absolutely engaging and inherently fascinating read from first page to last, Marcel's Letters is an extraordinary story—one that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book it finished and set back upon the shelf. . . . Unreservedly recommended,"— Midwest Book Review "It's evident on every page that Porter put her heart and soul into her research, and an equally passionate and tenacious support group aided her in uncovering all of Marcel's secrets. This book is at special read, one that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure."—Writers Bone, 16 Books That Should Be On Your Radar: September 2017 "Regardless of your disciplinary tribe, I recommend reading Marcel's Letters to learn more about designer-driven empathy in action. All design educators, whatever academic department, should add this book to their reading recommendations, even make it required, to provide a well-covered insider account of design as object-making adjacent to design as giving a damn."— DesignFeast.com Carolyn Porter is a graphic designer, typography geek, and founder of the graphic design company Porterfolio. She designed the font P22 Marcel Script, which garnered five awards, including the prestigious Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the New York Type Director’s Club. She lives in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

Features & Highlights

  • Finalist for the 2018 Minnesota Book Award
  • A graphic designer’s search for inspiration leads to a cache of letters and the mystery of one man’s fate during World War II.
  • Seeking inspiration for a new font design in an antique store in small-town Stillwater, Minnesota, graphic designer Carolyn Porter stumbled across a bundle of letters and was immediately drawn to their beautifully expressive pen-and-ink handwriting. She could not read the letters—they were in French—but she noticed all of them had been signed by a man named Marcel and mailed from Berlin to his family in France during the middle of World War II.As Carolyn grappled with designing the font, she decided to have one of Marcel’s letters translated. Reading it opened a portal to a different time, and what began as mere curiosity quickly became an obsession with finding out why the letter writer, Marcel Heuzé, had been in Berlin, how his letters came to be on sale in a store halfway around the world, and, most importantly, whether he ever returned to his beloved wife and daughters after the war.
  • Marcel’s Letters
  • is the incredible story of Carolyn’s increasingly desperate search to uncover the mystery of one man’s fate during WWII, seeking answers across Germany, France, and the United States. Simultaneously, she continues to work on what would become the acclaimed P22 Marcel font, immortalizing the man and his letters that waited almost seventy years to be reunited with his family.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(235)
★★★★
25%
(196)
★★★
15%
(117)
★★
7%
(55)
★
23%
(180)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Marcel bares witness to an often overlooked part of history

What started as an initial search for design inspiration for a typeface project (handwritten letters found in an antique store) evolved into a search for the author (Marcel Heuzé) and the story behind the series of 72-year-old hand-written letters he wrote from a forced labor camp near Berlin, is one any lover of design, history or thoughtful storytelling will treasure.

Roughly 6.5 million civilians were forced to work in German labor camps for industrial giants such as Bosch, Daimler-Benz, Philips, Siemens, Volkswagen, Audi and BMW. Many of these workcamps were actually subcamps attached to the larger concentration camps like Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen. According to John Beyer and Stephen Schneider's "Forced Labour under Third Reich," over a million French civilians were conscripted by French authorities to fulfill the Third Reich's Organization Todt's increasing labor requirements, and provide human resources to work alongside forced slave labor from Eastern Europe. These "guest workers," were labor resources culled from nations considered "friendly," allied or neutral to Germany, but were still forced to provide their skillsets to the Reich's war effort.

Marcel Heuzé was one of those estimated 1,100,000 French guest workers.

While trying to understand the story of the author of the letters, what happened to him and his family, why wartime letters from a French national would be in a Minnesota antique shop, why he was in a forced labor camp inside Germany in the first place, and how to approach Marcel’s surviving family in present-day France — Carolyn unearths the story of how the French government, in collaboration with their German occupiers enabled and enforced the conscription of French citizens to work for the Third Reich (after the nation's defeat in 1940).

It’s a side story of World War Two that is often overlooked, and she handles it wonderfully, taking us along on a completely engrossing and passionate journey of her own discovery, we’re wide-eyed in amazement with her as she weaves each new thread into the tapestry of Marcel’s life — initially a fabric made from the sorrow of wartime forced absence, but brightened into a post-war life of hope and renewal. It’s also the story of a family rediscovering their own past, and reconnecting with each other, in a way that might not have happened had the letters not called to Carolyn to pick them up back in 2002.

The typeface that started this journey, "Marcel Script" was published by P22 in 2014, and has won four awards including the Certificate for Typographic Excellence from the New York Type Director's Club. It's a masterwork -- it’s the wonderfully personable and expressive typeface that graces the cover of the book's dust jacket.

I was once honored to have a Holocaust survivor "bear witness" to me his story of survival, the deaths of his family and his liberation from Buchenwald. I was left in tears when he finished. It's been my duty to pass that story on to others, to remind them of the darkest truths of our history, and the risks of ignoring those lessons.

Carolyn's unlikely discovery in the Stillwater antique shop, of Marcel's peaceful words written to his children from inside Germanyt, is also the story of a survivor bearing witness and passing that truth to a new generation to bear the weight -- only this story was told in the graceful dance of thoughtful words in looping handwritten letterforms, on pages of now yellowing, thinning paper.
31 people found this helpful
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Read this book - you'll love it!

I read [[ASIN:1510719334 Marcel's Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man's Fate]] in one day (and night!) - once I started it, I couldn't stop reading. Now, 3 days later, I can't stop thinking about it. Carolyn Porter pulls the reader in with multiple story lines - first the story of a childhood dream, creating a new computer font (Marcel) based on the handwriting in letters discovered in a Stillwater, MN antique shop - then the story described in the letters of a French family torn apart during WWII when the father was a conscripted laborer in Berlin and the family struggled to survive in France - next, the WWII history to explain their story - and last and most engaging the story of learning what happened to Marcel and to his family as the war ended, and how the letters ended up half a world away in a small town antique shop. I found all of it fascinating. Learning some of the terminology and technical aspects of developing a new font based on handwriting was great for me as a printing hobbyist. (BTW I purchased the new font to use in my printing work, and it is beautiful and complete - using it to the fullest will be a stretch for me, and require learning some new software tools - that's all good!) Learning about WWII and conscripted laborers was new to me. Best was the search for Marcel and his family - so many serendipity moments, seemingly random happenings that help move the search for Marcel along - it reads like fiction - but it's all true. What a story! What a book!
8 people found this helpful
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Just couldn't finish it...

I have to agree with the reviewer who does not understand the praise for this book. While the concept is intriguing, I had to force myself to read until I discovered the mystery behind Marcel about half-way through the book. I kept picking it up and trying to finish it for a couple of months, but reluctantly shelved the book at that point. It is rare that I do not read a book I've started all the way through. However, the writing is juvenile and boring, the story drags on and on, and the author's self-absorption is annoying. Porter would be better off sticking to graphics.
7 people found this helpful
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A design challenge, a WWII primary, a thriller, and a love story

Graphic designer Carolyn Porter takes her reader along with her as she searches to find out what happened to the man whose handwriting consumes her. While designing a font from handwritten letters purchased at an antique store, Porter is pulled into WWII and one man’s testaments of love for his family. I couldn't resist the pull either and read this book in three sittings. A very satisfying read that will not be forgotten.
5 people found this helpful
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Marcel's Letters is a heartfelt telling of a true story ...

Marcel's Letters is a heartfelt telling of a true story that has us cheering for the author, for Marcel, for the French family, and for the font. Kudos to Carolyn Porter for her persistence and perseverance, and for bringing us this delightful and important story. Porter has rescued one man's legacy, and ultimately gifted us with her own.
3 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A typographical search for the truth

When I went to hear Carolyn Porter speak, I knew two things about her book Marcel’s Letters: That she had designed a font based on World War II letters written in French, and she’d become obsessed with the story and the people behind those letters. I work in marketing as a writer, which is to say I’ve spent nearly 20 years in partnership with designers to make sure words look right on the page. That means getting the words right as well as the kerning.
There’s also the mystery of getting the story right, an obsession that fell on Porter as a writer and a designer. Marcel’s Letters refers to the handwriting that called to Porter from a Stillwater antique shop as well as the substance of his writing. Marcel was imprisoned in a German labor camp, writing to his wife and young daughters.
As she gave her talk, before I read the book, she spoke of how her curiosity was piqued years into the project of designing the font. She wanted to know who Marcel was, the circumstances of his life in Germany, whether he survived to see his beloved family again.
And then I read the book. Like a detective on a cold case, over several years Porter pursued every lead until she was able to understand Marcel’s story and give life to the legacy that might have been lost to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Her writing is honest: the annoyed but supportive husband; the fear of getting caught up in the rabbit hole of research at the expense of “productive” work; the frustration of leads and promises that ultimately disappoint. For anyone who loves a good love story, is prone to obsession with history and genealogy, or is drawn to beautiful letters (in both senses), I recommend Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A typographical search for the truth

When I went to hear Carolyn Porter speak, I knew two things about her book Marcel’s Letters: That she had designed a font based on World War II letters written in French, and she’d become obsessed with the story and the people behind those letters. I work in marketing as a writer, which is to say I’ve spent nearly 20 years in partnership with designers to make sure words look right on the page. That means getting the words right as well as the kerning.
There’s also the mystery of getting the story right, an obsession that fell on Porter as a writer and a designer. Marcel’s Letters refers to the handwriting that called to Porter from a Stillwater antique shop as well as the substance of his writing. Marcel was imprisoned in a German labor camp, writing to his wife and young daughters.
As she gave her talk, before I read the book, she spoke of how her curiosity was piqued years into the project of designing the font. She wanted to know who Marcel was, the circumstances of his life in Germany, whether he survived to see his beloved family again.
And then I read the book. Like a detective on a cold case, over several years Porter pursued every lead until she was able to understand Marcel’s story and give life to the legacy that might have been lost to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Her writing is honest: the annoyed but supportive husband; the fear of getting caught up in the rabbit hole of research at the expense of “productive” work; the frustration of leads and promises that ultimately disappoint. For anyone who loves a good love story, is prone to obsession with history and genealogy, or is drawn to beautiful letters (in both senses), I recommend Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A typographical search for the truth

When I went to hear Carolyn Porter speak, I knew two things about her book Marcel’s Letters: That she had designed a font based on World War II letters written in French, and she’d become obsessed with the story and the people behind those letters. I work in marketing as a writer, which is to say I’ve spent nearly 20 years in partnership with designers to make sure words look right on the page. That means getting the words right as well as the kerning.
There’s also the mystery of getting the story right, an obsession that fell on Porter as a writer and a designer. Marcel’s Letters refers to the handwriting that called to Porter from a Stillwater antique shop as well as the substance of his writing. Marcel was imprisoned in a German labor camp, writing to his wife and young daughters.
As she gave her talk, before I read the book, she spoke of how her curiosity was piqued years into the project of designing the font. She wanted to know who Marcel was, the circumstances of his life in Germany, whether he survived to see his beloved family again.
And then I read the book. Like a detective on a cold case, over several years Porter pursued every lead until she was able to understand Marcel’s story and give life to the legacy that might have been lost to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Her writing is honest: the annoyed but supportive husband; the fear of getting caught up in the rabbit hole of research at the expense of “productive” work; the frustration of leads and promises that ultimately disappoint. For anyone who loves a good love story, is prone to obsession with history and genealogy, or is drawn to beautiful letters (in both senses), I recommend Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A typographical search for the truth

When I went to hear Carolyn Porter speak, I knew two things about her book Marcel’s Letters: That she had designed a font based on World War II letters written in French, and she’d become obsessed with the story and the people behind those letters. I work in marketing as a writer, which is to say I’ve spent nearly 20 years in partnership with designers to make sure words look right on the page. That means getting the words right as well as the kerning.
There’s also the mystery of getting the story right, an obsession that fell on Porter as a writer and a designer. Marcel’s Letters refers to the handwriting that called to Porter from a Stillwater antique shop as well as the substance of his writing. Marcel was imprisoned in a German labor camp, writing to his wife and young daughters.
As she gave her talk, before I read the book, she spoke of how her curiosity was piqued years into the project of designing the font. She wanted to know who Marcel was, the circumstances of his life in Germany, whether he survived to see his beloved family again.
And then I read the book. Like a detective on a cold case, over several years Porter pursued every lead until she was able to understand Marcel’s story and give life to the legacy that might have been lost to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Her writing is honest: the annoyed but supportive husband; the fear of getting caught up in the rabbit hole of research at the expense of “productive” work; the frustration of leads and promises that ultimately disappoint. For anyone who loves a good love story, is prone to obsession with history and genealogy, or is drawn to beautiful letters (in both senses), I recommend Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

A typographical search for the truth

When I went to hear Carolyn Porter speak, I knew two things about her book Marcel’s Letters: That she had designed a font based on World War II letters written in French, and she’d become obsessed with the story and the people behind those letters. I work in marketing as a writer, which is to say I’ve spent nearly 20 years in partnership with designers to make sure words look right on the page. That means getting the words right as well as the kerning.
There’s also the mystery of getting the story right, an obsession that fell on Porter as a writer and a designer. Marcel’s Letters refers to the handwriting that called to Porter from a Stillwater antique shop as well as the substance of his writing. Marcel was imprisoned in a German labor camp, writing to his wife and young daughters.
As she gave her talk, before I read the book, she spoke of how her curiosity was piqued years into the project of designing the font. She wanted to know who Marcel was, the circumstances of his life in Germany, whether he survived to see his beloved family again.
And then I read the book. Like a detective on a cold case, over several years Porter pursued every lead until she was able to understand Marcel’s story and give life to the legacy that might have been lost to his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Her writing is honest: the annoyed but supportive husband; the fear of getting caught up in the rabbit hole of research at the expense of “productive” work; the frustration of leads and promises that ultimately disappoint. For anyone who loves a good love story, is prone to obsession with history and genealogy, or is drawn to beautiful letters (in both senses), I recommend Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate.
2 people found this helpful

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