Was The Russian Princess Anastasia Ever Found

Women of Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

First the Raven

An encounter with a strange, bearded man on a motorcycle foretells a journey of redemption for Amir, an Israeli ex-paratrooper who is a veteran of two Middle East wars and the Intifada. His marriage and his relationship with his troubled daughter both fraying, he secretly longs to parachute again, but worries that his life in Los Angeles has made him go soft, too weak to return to the skies. One rainy afternoon, he finds respite in a restaurant run by expatriate Israelis. There, he finds an unlikely friend in Rosenberg, an elderly Holocaust survivor who makes his living conducting funerals. Estranged from his own family, Rosenberg makes the rounds of convalescent homes and mortuaries, picking up lonely strangers like wounded birds. When Amir's daughter is implicated in a shooting, Rosenberg becomes Amir's spiritual compass as the two come to terms with devastating events long buried in their pasts.

The Spectator