TO SEE GOD

Berger’s sequel novel offers an examination of how generational trauma is passed in the continuing story of a psychiatrist and his family members.

Dr. Nicky Covo, a widower, lives in New York City with his partner, Helen Blanco. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, Nicky was separated from his sister as a child after the war was over. His daughter, Kayla, has schizophrenia and lives with her brother, Max, and son, Jackie. Across the Atlantic, Nicky’s sister—a nun named Sister Theodora—lives in a monastery under the guidance of Abbess Fevronia. Sister Theodora dreams and has visions that her grandnephew, Jackie, is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Jackie, meanwhile, is recovering from trauma he experienced when his mother stopped taking her medication and harmed him. Nicky, in an attempt to help the musically inclined boy, takes him to the New Orleans Jazz Fest; however, a chance encounter with Jackie’s father there puts a custody case in motion. Meanwhile, Sister Theodora and Abbess Fevronia leave Greece and head to the United States to try to put the nun’s assumptions about Jackie to rest: “Theodora felt that she had an important role to play in God’s plan. God would not have given her the vision of Jackie as Jesus had He not wanted her to act.” This series entry, following The Flight of the Veil (2020) and The Music Stalker (2021), ably explores convergences and divergences between Judaism and Christianity; the story of biracial Jackie also touches on topics related to race, and the author’s treatment of these subjects is confident and never heavy-handed. The chapters masterfully handle three separate storylines and multiple points of view, which dovetail naturally over the course of the story. The novel’s overarching theme of how trauma is passed down from parents to children is particularly well handled, and it makes this story work well as a stand-alone work as well as part of a series.

A thoughtful and satisfying concluding volume of a trilogy.