The History of Soul 2065

This remarkable mosaic of interconnected stories, many of which were previously published, spans generations to relay the strange, somber, and deeply entwined histories of two Jewish families. In 1914, Chana, a Russian, and Sophia, a German, meet as young girls in a magical forest that somehow connects Lviv, Ukraine, and Munich. Though they promise to return, the girls are kept apart by war and family conflict. The branches of their family trees have semimystical experiences for generations to come. In the stories that follow, readers meet, among others: Chana’s son-in-law, visited by the cancer god on his death bed; Sophia’s daughter, aided by a magical gem as she escapes the Holocaust; Chana’s husband, haunted by the ghost of a daughter from his first marriage; Sophia’s granddaughter, granted the gift of a do-over by a “representative of Time” who appears to her in the form of a parakeet; and finally Sophia and Chana’s great-granddaughters, who become best friends and lovers. Powerful and dreamlike, this intergenerational meditation on family, mortality, and hope is far more than the sum of its parts. (June)