Eva Stern is Jewish. Growing up in Germany in the 1930s, she has no idea what awaits her family in the following decade. Everyone close to her is killed. Eva herself is placed in a concentration camp and endures brutal labor practices and the humiliation of dehumanization. Upon liberation by the allies, she feels entirely lost. Now an adult, Eva is haunted by guilt for having been the sole member of her family to survive. More importantly, her life feels like a waking nightmare as the memories of her loved ones keep seeping into the present, robbing Eva of any ability to form new attachments and to build a future for herself.
Despite her internal feeling of isolation, Eva makes friends and has admirers. One even proses to marry her, but she is emotionally unavailable. Defeated, her soldier beau retreats to his homeland, England, and joins the thousands of young men in the "Lost Generation." At the same time, Eva observes how the other surviving Jews around her rebuild after the war. Her Uncle Stephan actually leaves his family behind in order to move to Israel. He leans into his heritage as the sole purpose of his life. As Eva considers Jewishness in its various manifestations of identity, she offers the reader a glimpse into a brief and by no means complete history of Judaism.
Based closely upon a real event, Phillips describes a group of Jews in the fifteenth century who made a living through financial investment. They leant money to a group of Christians who did not return in time. As rumor has it, the Jews then proceeded to murder the Christians' child. They were promptly shunned by the entire community. At this point Phillips draws more direct attention to the way that racial stereotypes have influenced the most basic interactions of one people group with another. He writes about Othello's struggle to ingratiate himself among the Italians in order to win over his beloved Desdemona.
