"In 1938, just before they were killed by the Nazis, Frieda and Siegmund Westerfeld sent their twelve-year-old daughter, Edith, to live with relatives in America. Edith escaped the death camps but was left profoundly adrift, cut off from the culture of her homeland ... her entire identity. For decades she shut away her memories, unable even to sing a German lullaby to her children, until she realized that the void of the past was consuming her and her family. Then, with her daughter Fern, Edith returned to Germany."--Jacket.

"It's 1970's Chicago. Eleven-year-old Matasha Wax is in the sixth grade and just starting to feel the pressures of growing up. Her best friend Jean has been blowing her off, while her parents are in a standoff over her mother's desire to adopt a refugee from Vietnam. And while the bullies in school have started to grow breasts and inches, Matasha remains a puny four-foot-four--which means she will need growth hormone shots, and she is terrified of needles. Apart from her daily reading of the advice columns in the newspaper, keeping up with the Patty Hearst and Watergate scandals, and tracking her parents' deteriorating marriage, Matasha is fixated by the story of Martin Kimmel, a nine-year-old boy who disappeared a few months ago, and whose body has yet to be found. But none of these ongoing problems could have prepared Matasha for her mother's sudden disappearance. When the letters start coming from Switzerland, she knows something is very, very wrong--but no one will tell her what's going on, so Matasha has to figure it all out for herself."--Page 4 of cover