Lilya Wasserfall is a soldier in the fight for an independent Jewish state when she is drafted to finish up some unfinished business from the last war in Displaced, by Stephen Abarbanell. Her mission is to find the lost brother of Elias Lind. Lind left Germany in the 1920s while his brother remained in Berlin to further his research on chemical warfare before disappearing into the Nazi forced labor system. There are a few leads for Lilya to follow, the most curious being that the British reported the elder Lind’s death in 1941.
After a quick trip to London during which she discovers some scientific skullduggery, Lilya’s quest takes her to the refugee camps of post-war Germany. It quickly becomes apparent that Lilya and Elias aren’t the only ones who want to know if Raphael Lind survived the war. Lilya picks up on more than one man tailing her in London and in Germany. The more she learns about what Raphael did during the war, the more it makes sense that certain parties are very interested in his current whereabouts.
There are parts of Displaced that were deeply affecting: the fight to restart the lives of displaced refugees and Holocaust survivors, pre-war romances gone awry, a detour into stolen books. But, after a while, it all seemed like a bit too much. Clues from the first part of the novel turned out to be either red herrings or simple McGuffins. The action sequences, which added a bit of spice to the book, were over far too quickly to be effective. Displaced is a messy novel.
I did enjoy Lilya’s journey. At the beginning of the novel, Lilya is very much a forward-looking sabra. Her life is all about helping to create an independent Israel (and about setting aside her grief for her fallen adopted brother). Being a native of British Mandate era Palestine, Lilya is not entirely sympathetic to European Jews. But the more time she spends with survivors in Germany, the more she gets wrapped up in their collective story and the fight to help them. So, in spite of its problems, I was hooked by this book—partly because I had no idea where it was going.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss for review consideration. It will be released 7 November 2017.