Reparations

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. Along with her journalist husband Jacob – an ambitious writer yearning for fame covering the end of the War – Molly moves through the destroyed world of Eastern Europe, living an unexpected life. 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 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 built car. Molly has another quest as 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 Molly wants to create new life. Written in 1950, Reparations ends with Molly’s choice, the choice of a completely modern woman.