As a child Beverly Rabinowitz fled Europe with her mother during World War II. Almost half a century later while vacationing in Florida with her boyfriend and his son a chance encounter leads to a strangely lucid moment in which she senses that her father long believed to have been killed during the war is close by. It’s the first of many seemingly random events that are guiding Beverly and the people in her life toward a startling discovery. Over the course of Frederick Reiken’s provocative intricate novel Beverly will learn that her story is part of something larger and brilliantly surprising. Because her story is not hers alone but also that of a comatose teenage boy in Utah an elusive sixties-era fugitive an FBI agent pursuing a twenty-year obsession a Massachusetts veterinarian who falls in love on a kibbutz in Israel and a host of other characters. Day For Night illuminates how disparate far-flung people can be connected and how the truth of those bonds can upend entire lives. Each chapter is a small universe of its own and together they form a dazzling whole. Gliding effortlessly across time and space in settings that range from Florida to New Jersey to the Caribbean and the Dead Sea Day For Night builds toward moments of revelation when refugees from their own lives or from history’s cruelties come together in unpredictable and extraordinary ways.
