And After the Fire

This literary thriller "explores the vexing question of whether art can be simultaneously beautiful and hateful . . . dazzle[s] while delving into dark places (NPR's Fresh Air).

At the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a deserted mansion in Germany and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him.


In America in 2010, Henry's niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after an act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript. She becomes determined to return it to its rightful owner, a journey that will challenge her preconceptions about herself and her family's history—and also offer her an opportunity to make peace with the past.


In Berlin, Germany, in 1783, amid the city's glittering salons where aristocrats and commoners, Christians and Jews, mingle freely despite simmering anti-Semitism, Sara Itzig Levy, a renowned musician, conceals the manuscript of an anti-Jewish cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, an unsettling gift to her from Bach's son, her teacher. This work and its disturbing message will haunt Sara and her family for generations to come.


Interweaving the stories of Susanna and Sara, and their families, And After the Fire traverses over two hundred years of history, from the eighteenth century through the Holocaust and into today, seamlessly melding past and present, real and imagined.


"Remarkably suspenseful . . . a literary thriller in the tradition of A. S. Byatt's Possession." —Kirkus Reviews

"Absorbing." —Booklist, starred review


"An intellectual thriller and a beautiful love story." —Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Water for Elephants