A European orphan transplanted to New York, Doriel is shaped by the pain of the deaths of his parents following World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, and seeks solace in an intense study of Judaism and a search for the secrets of his mother's life.

"In August 1938 Hitler’s Brownshirts conquer Czechoslovakia. German Jews are deported in cattle cars to Poland, the country of earlier pograms. Other Jews flee to Palestine, the Promised Land of their dreams . . . only to be imprisoned behind barbed wire upon their arrival. Musicians Shimon and Leah Feldstein, two of the “lucky ones,” are allowed to disembark from their rusting ship. Yet even in the Holy City, darkness lurks. The Muslim Grand...