Book: And After the Fire by Lauren Belfer
When: Friday, August 31, 7pm
In Berlin, Germany, in 1783, amid the city’s glittering salons where aristocrats and commoners, Christians and Jews, mingle freely, Sara Itzig Levy, a renowned musician, conceals the score of an anti-Jewish masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach, an unsettling gift to her from Bach’s son, her teacher. This work and its disturbing message will haunt Sara and her family for generations to come.
In war-ravaged Germany, in 1945, an American soldier takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him.
In America, in 2010, his niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after experiencing a devastating act of violence. When her beloved uncle dies, she uncovers the long-hidden manuscript. She’s determined to discover what it is and to return it to its rightful owner, a journey that will challenge her preconceptions about herself and her family’s history—and also offer her an opportunity finally to make peace with the past.
Interweaving the stories of Susanna and Sara, and their families, And After the Fire traverses more than two hundred years of history, seamlessly melding past and present, real and imagined.