IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLOCAUST & WWII – FICTION

Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook: A Novel begins in the late 1990s with Harvard student Anna, who falls for Christoph, a visiting German student, and follows him to his home country. Their romance unfolds amid family legacies – including those of Anna’s grandfather, an American GI, and Christoph’s, a Nazi soldier. Traumas of the past and the aftershocks of fascism haunt them, reverberating through to the present. In Maggie Stiefvater’s The Listeners: A Novel, it’s January 1942 and the aristocratic owners of the elegant Avallon Hotel & Spa in West Virginia make a secret deal, filling the hotel with captured Axis diplomats. Now local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson must persuade her staff – many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front – to offer luxury to Nazis – with a smile. In The Red House: A Novel, Mary Morris weaves together a family mystery, a poignant coming-of-age story, and little-known secrets of Italy’s Second World War. Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother vanished, leaving behind mysterious paintings of a red house. After a strange scavenger hunt and a felicitous encounter, Laura finds the dark truth of her mother’s story – and at last makes sense of her own.

JEWISH LIFE & CULTURE PROGRAMS ARE PRESENTED BY

Buy The Scrapbook: A Novel – Clark

Buy The Red House: A Novel – Morris

Buy The Listeners: A Novel – Stiefvater