ONE COLD SPRING NIGHT, in the small Jewish cemetery of Zokof , Friedl Alterman is wakened from death. On the ground adove her crouches Itzik Leiber. A reclusive, unbelieving fourteen-year-old whose fatal mistake has spurred the town's angry residents to violence. The childless Friedl rises to guide him to safety-only to find she cannot go back to her grave.

Now Friedl is trapped in that thin world between life and death, her brash decision binding her forever to Itzik and his family: she is fated to be forever restless, and he, forever haunted by the ghosts of his past.

Years later, after Itzik himself has gone to his grave, his son, Nathan, knows nothing of his bitter father's childhood. When he begrudgingly goes to Poland on business, Nathan decides on a whim to visit his ancestral town. There, in Zokof, he meets the mysterious Rafael, the town's last remaining Jew, who promises to pass on all the things Itzik had failed to teach his son-about zokof, about his faith, and about himself.

And yet, like the generation before him, Mathan keeps what he learns hidden inside himself. With the family legacy in danger of being lost, Friedl's restless spirit guides Itzik's precocious granddaughter, Ellen, on a journey of her own to Zokof, where only Friedl can help Ellen unlock the mysteries of her famil's past-and only Ellen can help Friedl break her agonizing enslavement.

A stunning debut novel of enormous scope and beauty, A Day of Small Beginnings tells the timeless story of the Leiber family; of the secrets that break them, the love that binds them, and the town that is both their curse and their redemption.

 

LISA PEARL ROSENBAUM has worked as both a choreographer and a lawyer. She studied religion and philosophy at New York University and completed postgraduate work in international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem . She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Walter Lipsman, and their daughters, Ariana and Maya. This is her first novel.