The Reason for Wings: A Novel

Joyce Reiser Kornblatt's protagonist Rachael Silver, a Holocaust survivor living in Argentina, undertakes "the duties of a witness," setting down for her missing granddaughter Marcella, a history of the family's survival. The chronicle begins with Rachael's grandparents Dov and Reba and their young daughter Sonia, who will become Rachael's mother. This is a tale of departure and arrival -- from Dov's mysterious "winged" disappearance in the Danube Delta and his family's subsequent flight from pogroms and war. In temporary refuges -- a Carpathian Mountain spa, a Catholic convent, an elegant Prague apartment, the Berounka caves and Pilsen's underground tunnels -- Kornblatt's characters compel us with their dignity, their humor and especially their endurance even in the face of the Nazi's relentless genocide. Finding haven at last in Buenos Aires, Dov Landau's descendants encounter the Fascist nightmare yet again, swept up this time in Argentina's "Dirty War" of the 1970s. When her pregnant daughter and son-in-law vanish into the military torture camps, Rachael finds strength and courage in the family stories she herself creates. A legacy for her granddaughter -- "We would have named you Marcella" -- Rachael's narrative is a testimony to love as much as it is to the will to live.