This is a quietly powerful saga. Readers familiar with her Regency novels will recognize the same careful attention to character, emotional restraint, and moral nuance, though here the story feels more intimate and reflective.
Austen’s morality is fundamentally optimistic. Virtue may be delayed, misunderstood, or tested, but it is ultimately rewarded. Even when characters suffer, suffering is educational, not existential. Reibel's character asks a question straight out of Austen’s moral universe: If love is real, shouldn’t it be singular and eternal?
********** SPOILER - sort of? **********
Beneath the surface runs a deep current of grief, longing, and the possibility of healing. For me, the book also holds special significance as an important piece of Jewish historical fiction, one that honors identity, memory, and continuity. I appreciate the author's intention of honoring her ancestors with this narrative. The ending is especially haunting, leaving the reader with unanswered questions about how the approaching war will shape—and possibly shatter—the lives we’ve come to care about.
I couldn't help but compare Reibel's narrative to Austen's "Persuasion." I mentioned that the author also wrote Regency novels (under the name Elizabeth Mansfield); perhaps that's why I recognized something interesting in the exchange between Avrum and his son, Dov at the close of the story. Dov questions his father on how he could marry again. How much could he have loved his first wife, Dov's mother? It immediately calls to mind Anne Elliot’s conversation with Captain Harville about constancy and memory. Where Harville argues for the strength of men’s feelings, Anne gently counters that women are often left to live with their emotions long after men have been pulled back into the world. Both scenes strip away idealized notions of love without diminishing its importance. Avrum speaks from the vantage point of experience, while Anne speaks from the ache of endurance, yet each reveals love as something shaped by circumstance, time, and daily life rather than pure romance alone. Placed side by side, the moments feel less like contradictions and more like complements: Austen shows how love lingers, while Reibel shows how it evolves. Together, they suggest that love is neither singular nor static, but something that survives precisely because it adapts—sometimes through memory, sometimes through renewal, and sometimes through the quiet acceptance that even the miraculous must find a way to live in the ordinary.
Austen’s morality is fundamentally optimistic. Virtue may be delayed, misunderstood, or tested, but it is ultimately rewarded. Even when characters suffer, suffering is educational, not existential. Reibel's character asks a question straight out of Austen’s moral universe:
If love is real, shouldn’t it be singular and eternal?
**********
SPOILER - sort of?
**********
Beneath the surface runs a deep current of grief, longing, and the possibility of healing. For me, the book also holds special significance as an important piece of Jewish historical fiction, one that honors identity, memory, and continuity. I appreciate the author's intention of honoring her ancestors with this narrative. The ending is especially haunting, leaving the reader with unanswered questions about how the approaching war will shape—and possibly shatter—the lives we’ve come to care about.
I couldn't help but compare Reibel's narrative to Austen's "Persuasion." I mentioned that the author also wrote Regency novels (under the name Elizabeth Mansfield); perhaps that's why I recognized something interesting in the exchange between Avrum and his son, Dov at the close of the story. Dov questions his father on how he could marry again. How much could he have loved his first wife, Dov's mother? It immediately calls to mind Anne Elliot’s conversation with Captain Harville about constancy and memory. Where Harville argues for the strength of men’s feelings, Anne gently counters that women are often left to live with their emotions long after men have been pulled back into the world. Both scenes strip away idealized notions of love without diminishing its importance. Avrum speaks from the vantage point of experience, while Anne speaks from the ache of endurance, yet each reveals love as something shaped by circumstance, time, and daily life rather than pure romance alone. Placed side by side, the moments feel less like contradictions and more like complements: Austen shows how love lingers, while Reibel shows how it evolves. Together, they suggest that love is neither singular nor static, but something that survives precisely because it adapts—sometimes through memory, sometimes through renewal, and sometimes through the quiet acceptance that even the miraculous must find a way to live in the ordinary.