By Blood: A Novel

Description

The award-winning writer returns with a major, absorbing, atmospheric novel that takes on the most dramatic and profoundly personal subject matter San Francisco in the 1970s. Free love has given way to radical feminism, psychedelic ecstasy to hard-edged gloom. The Zodiac Killer stalks the streets. A disgraced professor takes an office in a downtown tower to plot his return. But the walls are thin and he's distracted by voices from next door—his neighbor is a psychologist, and one of her patients dislikes the hum of the white-noise machine. And so he begins to hear about the patient's troubles with her female lover, her conflicts with her adoptive, avowedly WASP family, and her quest to track down her birth mother. The professor is not just absorbed but enraptured. And the further he is pulled into the patient's recounting of her dramas—and the most profound questions of her own identity—the more he needs the story to move forward. The patient's questions about her birth family have led her to a Catholic charity that trafficked freshly baptized orphans out of Germany after World War II. But confronted with this new self— "I have no idea what it means to say ‘I'm a Jew'"—the patient finds her search stalled. Armed with the few details he's gleaned, the professor takes up the quest and quickly finds the patient's mother in records from a German displaced-persons camp. But he can't let on that he's been eavesdropping, so he mocks up a reply from an adoption agency the patient has contacted and drops it in the mail. Through the wall, he hears how his dear patient is energized by the news, and so is he. He unearths more clues and invests more and more in this secret, fraught, triangular relationship: himself, the patient, and her therapist, who is herself German. His research leads them deep into the history of displaced-persons camps, of postwar Zionism, and—most troubling of all—of the Nazi Lebensborn program. With ferocious intelligence and an enthralling, magnetic prose, Ellen Ullman weaves a dark and brilliant, intensely personal novel that feels as big and timeless as it is sharp and timely. It is an ambitious work that establishes her as a major writer.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  By Blood: A Novel

  • 2012-02-28
  • 378 pages
  • Paperback
  • Macmillan

Similar books

• 

  By Blood Alone

  By William C. Dietz

  As punishment for stepping on some very powerful toes, misfit Legion officer Bill Booly is sent to the worst post in the galaxy--Fort Mosby, Earth, home to a collection of renegades, rejects, and rogues--but Booly and his troops turn out to ...

• 

  Washed by Blood: Lessons from My Time with Korn and My Journey to Christ

  By Brian Welch

  An Out-of-Control Rock Star. An Inescapable Addiction to Drugs. A Miraculous Redemption through Jesus Christ. You think you've heard this story before but you haven't.

• 

  The Book of Blood: From Legends and Leeches to Vampires and Veins

  By Harvey P. Newquist

  From ancient history to modern science, to dark and often gruesome legends of vampires and plague, this thrilling and lively tour of the world of blood informs readers about the most important fluid in the body. 10,000 first printing.

• 

  Of Blood and Bone: Chronicles of The One

  By Nora Roberts

  Nora Roberts, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the epic Year One returns with Of Blood and Bone, a new tale of terror and magick in a brand new world.

• 

  The Bug: A Novel

  By Ellen Ullman

  The Bug breaks new ground in literary fiction, offering us a deep look into the internal lives of people in the technical world.

• 

  The Book of Blood and Shadow

  By Robin Wasserman

  When Nora Kane discovers her best friend murdered and her boyfriend the apparent killer, she is caught up in a web of secret societies and conspirators, all searching for a device purported to allow direct communication with God.

• 

  American By Blood: A Novel

  By Andrew Huebner

  ... Geoff Kloske; Dan Green; David Rosenthal; Nicole Graev; Julie H. Forbes; Sarah Manges; Abby Thomas; Catherine Luttinger; Bret Ellis; Tony Williams; Maggie Estep; Ingalill Wahlroos; Jim Coleman; Louise Wareham; William Georgiades; ...

• 

  In the Blood: A Thriller

  By Jack Carr

  ​“Take my word for it, James Reece is one rowdy motherf***er.

• 

  Bound by Blood and Name: A History and Genealogies of the Podoll Families in Prussia and America

  Johann Podoll (1820-1899) was the son of Christian Friedrich Podoll and Johanna Louise Melling of Radwonke, Co. Kolmar, Grand Duchy of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia. He married Anna Caroline Podoll,...

• 

  Wolf by Wolf: One girl’s mission to win a race and kill Hitler

  By Ryan Graudin

  From the author of The Walled City comes a fast-paced and innovative novel that will leave you breathless.