Reparations: A Tale of War and Rebirth
Ruth Sidransky, 2015
Shadowteams
522 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781505646825
Summary
With the sweep of Sophie's Choice and search for identity of Everything is Illuminated, Reparations is the story of Molly Rose, an innocent catapulted from the streets of New York into the bombed out cities of Austria and Germany at the end of World War II.
This is her story, a story of circumstance and choices, survival and strength, love and betrayal. In the early years in Europe, Molly meets stateless Jews in Austria and Germany. They become her European family.
Slowly, they begin to tell their secrets of horror under the Nazis: mutilation, experimentation, rape, torture, state-induced abortions, relentless cruelty and death. Some turn to smuggling goods, gold bullion and loose silver, to Spain and Italy. Molly and Jacob join them, driving across borders in a specially made car.
Molly has another quest as well: Molly wants a baby for herself and for the surviving Jewish women experimented on by Nazi doctors. Molly wants to undo the wrong done to her sisters by the ultimate affirming act: Molly wants to create new life.