Winter Passing

This Christian novel by first-time author Martinusen attempts to treat an ambitious subject--the legacy of the Holocaust experienced by survivors and their descendants--but the work suffers from an implausible plot involving a family treasure lost during the Nazi occupation of Austria. The narrative opens with young California photographer Darby Evans grieving over her beloved grandmother Celia's death from cancer. She is puzzled by her grandmother's last request: for Darby to return to Austria and seek out the truth about Tatianna, Celia's best friend from childhood. Darby discovers that Tatianna had sacrificed herself during the war by posing as the half-Jewish Celia to allow Celia to escape the Nazis. In her friend's stead, Tatianna first was tortured for information about the whereabouts of family jewelry and precious coins, and then executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Darby pieces together the past and begins to understand the moral complexities of the war as she meets ordinary people who did what they thought they needed to do in order to save their own families. These glimpses of moral ambiguity are the most sophisticated moments in the book, but they are offset by a formulaic romantic story line, an unconvincing scene in which Darby confronts Tatianna's executioner and the inevitable kidnapping-and-treasure-digging sequence at the novel's end. The clich d plot dilutes the novel's strengths, which include its well-described Austrian setting (featuring, for example, a mouth-watering history of the Sacher torte) and its willingness to grapple with deep questions of theodicy. (Sept.)