The Houseguest: A Novel

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About The Houseguest: A Novel

A novel “brimming with rich historical detail . . . a different kind of Holocaust story, set on American soil in 1941.” —The Chicago Review of Books   Abe Auer—a Russian immigrant and small-town junkyard owner—has become disenchanted with his life. So when his friend, a local rabbi with a dark past, asks Abe to take in a European refugee, he agrees, unaware that the woman coming to live with him is a volatile and alluring actress named Ana Beidler.   Ana regales the Auer family with tales of her lost stardom—and charms and mystifies Abe with her glamour and unabashed sexuality, forcing him to confront his own desire as well as the ghost of his dead brother. As news continues to filter out of Europe, American Jews struggle to make sense of the atrocities. Some want to bury their heads in the sand while others want to create a Jewish army that would fight Hitler and promote bold rescue initiatives. And when a popular Manhattan synagogue is burned to the ground, all begin to feel the drumbeat of war is marching ever closer to home.   Set on the eve of America’s involvement in World War II, The Houseguest examines a little-known aspect of the war and highlights the network of organizations seeking to help Jews abroad, just as masses of people seeking to escape Europe are turned away from American shores. Moving seamlessly from the Yiddish theaters of Second Avenue to the junkyards of Utica to the covert world of political activists, it is a moving story about identity, family, and the decisions that define who we will become.   “[An] ambitious, wildly successful novel . . . brings to vivid life the lesson that for better and for worse, people change the world, and the world changes people, and the best we can hope for is that some of the time, those changes are for the betterment of us all.” —Chicago Tribune   “An evocative sense of place and time . . . [The author] has ably pre