Returning

By: Yael Shahar

An embittered holocaust survivor cannot speak of what he was forced to do to survive. A young girl in Texas is haunted by a memory of horrors she could not have lived. Together, they must unlock the gates of memory to find the hope that lies beyond despair.

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Book Description

Alex died in Auschwitz, having betrayed his faith and his people. Now he's been given a single miraculous chance to put things right--but his fate is in the hands of a woman who only wants to forget, and a rabbi who isn't sure whether to be Alex's teacher or his judge.

Sixty years after the Holocaust, Alex is a silent prisoner of his memories, desperately seeking atonement for what he did to survive. But his destiny is entangled with the choices of a woman born into a different place and time--she alone can help him keep his promises to the dead. Yael, born and raised in Texas, has no connection with Alex's lost world, yet she is haunted by dark memories of horrors she could not have lived. She holds the key to Alex's future, if only she can summon the courage to confront his secrets.

Determined to put himself on trial, Alex approaches a local rabbi to serve as his judge. Rabbi Ish-Shalom quickly finds that this case goes beyond anything he has ever experienced--Alex's story will challenge everything he thought he knew about death and the human soul. Now he must decide: Should he help Alex reach the oblivion he seeks? Or should he enlist the help of centuries of Jewish wisdom to bring Alex back into the world of the living? Two lives, inexplicably linked by dark memory, hang in the balance.

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