The Bones of the World by Betsy L Ross

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Suffering guards its mysteries, but when an upswell of antisemitism forces Rachel into hiding from the Righteous, she begins her journey to its center.

The trip will take her back in history, to Sariah, a young woman whose status during the Inquisition is doubly-marred as a Jew and a lesbian; and to Jakob, a teenage boy who spends the Holocaust hidden in a farmhouse where he plans his revenge in the only way he can. Back in the present, Jewish children murdered by the Righteous wait for their stories to be told.

The Bones of the World asks who we become as a result of suffering. Like Jakob, desiring revenge? Like Sariah, seeking the salve of a community that accepts her? Or like Rachel, opening to the ancestral suffering that is her life’s clay, and her role in the swell of its story? The Bones of the World seeks to locate the place of suffering in a holy world and explores why we must tell these stories that are so often hard to hear.

Year first published: 2023