This story begins 'today' (2004) with 6 year old Solomon, a gifted child, growing up in California. He's precocious in a scary way, unnaturally interested in adult sexuality and physical violence, which he accesses via the internet. He also has an eating disorder, a father who has little interest in his Jewish heritage and an overindulgent mother.
We switch then to Sol's father's story in 1982. Randall is 7, his father has little interest in his Jewish heritage but his mother, a convert to the faith, is obsessed almost to the point of hysteria with the Holocaust and insists that they relocate, temporarily, to Israel.
In 1962 we hear Sadie's story. Sadie is Randall's mother, a free spirit raised by her grandparents. Loved but starved of physical affection, she longs to live with her unmarried mother who lives a bohemian live style among artists and musicians. Reunited with her mother at last, and with a step-father, they begin a new life in Canada.
In 1944-45 We learn about Kristina, Sadie's mother, as a child. She lives with her mother, brother, sister and grandparents not far from Munich. Their lives are touched by tragedy as father and brother are lost in the last days of a lost war and Kristina's world is turned upside down.
It is Kristina's story that really begins this family saga, told through the eyes of very young children over 4 generations. Between 1940 and 1945, over 200,000 babies and children were stolen from their natural families by the Wehrmacht, to be raised by German families as members of the 'Aryan' master race.
This is an intelligent story, told with care, skill and imagination. Children's voices tend not to hold emotion in the same way as those of adults, which makes the ending of this story even more poignant. Recommended.
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