From the acclaimed author of Pinkerton’s Sister , a moving retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story. A woman is murdered during a terrorist attack, leaving her three sons in the care of their grandmother, Lilli. As the four prepare to celebrate Christmas without her, Lilli is drawn into a lonely world of memories, forced to confront the horrors of the Nazi persecution she managed to survive. After losing her entire family in the Holocaust, Lilli finds that it is this final death–that of her daughter–that allows her to reach out to the next generation and, with them, forge a unique path toward peace and reconciliation.
"...a brilliant book...very real and terribly distressing." – A.S. Byatt
"This quite extraordinary book has the intense, deeply focused power of cultural meditation, on certain themes of suffering, of childhood and family, triumphant in this almost unbearable world." – New York Times Book Review