The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Rimmer, Kelly. The Things We Cannot Say. Graydon House, March 19, 2019. Kindle.

In The Things we Cannot Say, a love story by Kelly Rimmer, Alice Michaels is overwhelmed by her job as a full-time mother to a son, Eddie, who is on the autism spectrum and a daughter who is challenging in her own ways because of her high intelligence. Alice loves her husband, Wade. But, at the same time, she resents that he has never taken the opportunity to bond with his son. When Alice’s grandmother urges Alice to visit Poland to help her take care of some unfinished business, Alice fears Wade would never be able to handle the children. Instead, Alice is surprised by the way the separation forces Wade to connect with Eddie on Eddie’s terms. She also is shocked by the things she learns about the bravery shown by her grandparents as they helped Jews while living in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Rimmer presents her story using a pair of first-person narrators. Alina Dziak, a Polish teenager living in the small town of Trzebinia during World War II, tells her experiences during the war. She also describes her love for Tomasz Slaski and the things they went through to be together. Alina’s chapters are interspersed with chapters narrated by Alice Michaels, an American mother struggling with her family life. Alice’s beloved grandmother, Hanna Wis´niewski Slaski, is hospitalized, unable to speak, after suffering a stroke. She uses an iPad app to communicate to Alice that she wants Alice to go to Poland and find the answers that Hanna has to unfinished business in her life.

Alina’s narration describes her separation from Tomasz because he was away at college when the war started. When he returned to Alina, he was in hiding because he was helping to support Saul and Eva Weiss, a young Jewish couple and their infant daughter. They had helped Tomasz escape from his conscription into the German army so Tomasz believed he owed them any help he could give them. The couple is betrayed on the night Alina and Tomasz had arranged to escape from Poland. They were going to transport a canister of film showing the atrocities taking place at Auschwitz in exchange for their freedom. Saul’s daughter and wife were killed, but he was left alive. Tomasz decided to send Saul in his place, using his identification papers, to protect Saul. He told Alina he had to warn his family they were in danger and promised he would catch up with her when he could.

Saul and Alina made the trip to a Polish military camp where they stayed for three months waiting for Tomasz. During those three months, Saul, a doctor, realized Alina was pregnant by Tomasz. Not wanting her and her baby to be outcasts, Saul married Alina using Tomasz’s name, the name by which he was known at the camp. Alina, meanwhile, was using the alias Hanna Wis´niewski. When the British soldiers came for the film that Alina had smuggled across the border in a cast on her wrist, Saul convinced Alina they had to go to England with the soldiers for the sake of her baby. Saul intended to share with British authorities that he was Jewish, but he did not do so when he learned they had already arranged visas for them to America in the names of Tomasz and Hanna Slaski.

In America, Alina and Saul continued to use their aliases. There was never a good time for them to tell the truth. Saul took the place of Tomasz as the father of Alina’s baby, Julita. Julita never suspected Saul was not her biological father. It is only when Alice travels to Poland on her grandmother’s urging that they learn that Hanna was using an alias.

Alice manages to convince the family of Tomasz’s sister, Emilia, that she is Alina’s granddaughter. The family is unsure how Alina could have gotten pregnant by Tomasz since they were never married and Tomasz died in 1942. However, Alice looks so much like the rest of the family they cannot deny they are related. Emilia is able to untangle the mystery of Tomasz’s death and Alice’s belief that her grandmother had been married to Tomasz for decades. After Alina left with Saul, Tomasz turned himself in to the Germans to save Alina, Saul, and the rest of his family. He was killed.

Saul, however, had promised Tomasz he would care for Alina and Tomasz’s baby as his own until Tomasz returned. Saul had kept his promise. He and Alina stayed together until his death. They were best friends and partners, but they never shared a sexual relationship. Alina had been waiting all of those years for Tomasz to return and sent Alice to Poland to learn what happened to him. After Alina’s death, Alice and her family took Alina and Saul’s ashes back to Poland and buried them near Tomasz’s grave, a symbolic reuniting of the lovers.