KLARA'S TRUTH

In Friedman’s novel, an American archeologist discovers the true nature of her father’s disappearance when she was a child.

Dr. Klara Lieberman is a 49-year-old professor of anthropology with a specialty in archeology at Holbrook College, a small liberal arts institution in southern Maine. She’s alone and emotionally adrift, living a quietly comfortable but emotionally unsatisfying life. One day, she receives a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, telling her that the Polish government is set to issue reimbursements to people whose property was stolen by the Nazis and the Communists; that group includes her father, David, who was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw in 1971. Klara is flummoxed; her mother had told her that her father left them when she was 6 years old, though he actually died in a train accident. She grew up knowing virtually nothing about her dad and being estranged from his family in Poland. Eager to meet her paternal aunt, Rachel, and to learn more about her father, she heads overseas; meanwhile, Bessie is only interested in the money. Friedman, a psychotherapist, delicately chronicles Klara’s emotional journey, during which she experiences a great catharsis and finally starts to feel as if she’s found a true home and identity. She also begins a romance with Filip Jablonski, a record-keeper and part-time groundskeeper at the Jewish Cemetery of Warsaw, although Klara’s unresolved trauma due to childhood sexual abuse complicates their relationship. The novel often feels like an academic exercise in psychotherapy; its accounts of Klara’s sessions with a therapist, Dr. Kowalski, feel contrived and didactic. Also, some of the psychological insights feel somewhat stale, as when the author describes Klara’s unsatisfied longing to “find out who she was and where she came from—and even more pressing, a burning need to belong to and be a part of something greater than herself.” That said, this remains a thoughtful book that sensitively explores the emotional possibilities inherent in discovering one’s ancestry. As such, it’s a dramatically powerful work, despite its flaws.

An intelligent and nuanced story of reunion.