In the late 1990s, an elderly woman named Rebecca discovers the memoir of an esteemed professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, Freyda Morgenstern. Writing letters to her faculty office from Lake Worth, Florida, Rebecca claims that she is Dr. Morgenstern’s long-lost cousin from Kaufbeuren, Germany and that the two were meant to meet—but failed to—in 1941. In a series of letters that grow more and more straining, perhaps obsessive, Rebecca fails to receive word back from Dr. Morgenstern. Instead, she refers to other pieces of Morgenstern’s writing or interviews to keep the imaginary conversation going. When Dr. Morgenstern finally writes back, she curtly thanks Rebecca for her letters. Rebecca, reinvigorated, writes back, detailing how she found Morgenstern’s book and the emotional attachment she developed to it. She encloses a photo of herself at sixteen.  Freyda writes with another curt response, returning the photograph to Rebecca and noting that the two will likely not have time to meet with Freyda’s busy work schedule. In response, Rebecca details the lives of her family members in Nazi Germany and their eventual emigration to the US in 1936. Growing increasingly desperate, Rebecca promises she will fly to Freyda to meet her. In letter after letter, Rebecca asks for any amount of Freyda’s time; eventually, Freyda responds, asking Rebecca to stop calling her office and saying that, despite her loneliness, work is the cure. Rebecca’s next card is written on a Caspar David Freidrich postcard, which piques Freyda’s attention. She writes back to Rebecca, calling her “my tenacious American cousin,” asking how Rebecca found the postcard. Seizing the opportunity, Rebecca replies once more, and Freyda writes back saying “THANK YOU but please do not write again. I have had enough of you.”  In a twist, Freyda has a change of heart and pens a lengthy letter to Rebecca drunk at two in the morning, just a day after her previous note. In it, she details her childhood experience in a Nazi concentration camp, and reveals that she has saved a photocopy of the photograph Rebecca mailed her early on. She waxes on about the Holocaust, noting that “all events in history are accidents.” Freyda continues to write back to Rebecca as she rises in academic fame, detailing her awards and travels, and expressing her attachment to Rebecca saying, “I miss you.”  Rebecca answers with a mysteriously short note until, in a return letter, she lets Freyda know she has cancer and is in treatment. Having visited one of Freyda’s award ceremonies, Rebecca reveals that she was in the audience, with a gift for Freyda, but ended up going home. Freyda is furious, and writes several letters to Rebecca without return; Rebecca’s final letter apologizes for her lack of contact. Rebecca says that she spends more time dreaming than awake due to her illness. She signs it off with love. Freyda writes back, angry once more at Rebecca’s lack of contact and out of her desire to reach her. Their exchange ends with Freyda saying that she would like to visit Florida to see Rebecca.