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Ribbons for Their Hair
When young Detective Yardena Halpert is assigned a missing child case, she puts her heart and soul into finding three-year-old Adina Barzilai, despite feeling out of her league. What is the child s mother s tight-knit community hiding? And is Rafi, the girl s charismatic father, telling her the truth? The seven days of Yardena s investigation surreally interrupted by the 2006 Second Lebanon War - take her from Netanya to Moshav Ma ayan Chaim, and from Haifa to Thessaloniki, Greece, where the mystery dovetails with the story of another little girl whose father searched for her many years before. This page-turning, fast-paced read expertly blends mystery, romance, and historical narrative, as the fate of the Jewish community of Greece in World War II is outlined in painful clarity. A natural teacher, Estelle Chasen subtly educates through her riveting story lines, providing a bird s-eye view of the Jewish community of Greece as well as of several segments of modern Israeli society. The two stories merge so seamlessly that the book takes on a timeless quality, as fathers search for their daughters, families are torn apart by war, and new love sprouts even after the deepest loss.
- GenresJewish
208 pages, Paperback
First published March 20, 2010
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 24, 2014
This story goes back and forth in time between 1945 and 2006, and concerns two missing children, both with similar names (Adena in 1945 and Adina in 2006). It begins in 2006 in Israel, when the female police Inspector Yardena Halpert, 26, is given her first major case; she is put in charge (much to the chagrin of her male colleague) of finding out what happened to a missing three-year-old girl. Adina lives in a broken home with her mother, and there is a custody dispute, so the father is the most obvious suspect.
The 1945 story takes place in Greece, in Salonika (a coastal city in the northern Greece today called Thessaloniki). Before the Holocaust, Salonika had a Jewish community of about 60,000. These were Sephardic (more or less Spanish) Jews who had immigrated to Greece following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. During World War II, the Nazis occupied Greece and exterminated most of the Jews. Survivors who came back after the war were not welcomed. Today, only some 1200 Jews live in the city, yet it is still the second largest Jewish community in Greece.
Much of this story is told as part of the 1945 plot line in which Marco Levi is searching for his daughter Adena, who was taken in by nuns and renamed Maria Sava.
The stories are of course connected, and the book ends with an Epilogue from 2007, in which all the plot strands are tied together.
Discussion: The prose in this story is a bit awkward, but I do not know if that is because of differences in the way the various cultures express thoughts, or translation issues, or just a result of a writer not evincing as much skill with dialogue as other writers. There was also a case of InstaLove that didn’t seem too persuasive. Nevertheless, the story has a lot of good elements. It was so interesting to see how a female detective would be treated in a country in which the place of women is not as well accepted as it is the U.S., and how the detectives had to be aware of, and careful to cater to, the religious sensibilities of the suspects and witnesses. It was also very informative to read about the situation in Greece both before and after World War II.
Evaluation: This book is not without some faults in terms of quality of prose, but has so much to offer in terms of cultural and historical enlightenment that I feel it is worth reading.
The 1945 story takes place in Greece, in Salonika (a coastal city in the northern Greece today called Thessaloniki). Before the Holocaust, Salonika had a Jewish community of about 60,000. These were Sephardic (more or less Spanish) Jews who had immigrated to Greece following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. During World War II, the Nazis occupied Greece and exterminated most of the Jews. Survivors who came back after the war were not welcomed. Today, only some 1200 Jews live in the city, yet it is still the second largest Jewish community in Greece.
Much of this story is told as part of the 1945 plot line in which Marco Levi is searching for his daughter Adena, who was taken in by nuns and renamed Maria Sava.
The stories are of course connected, and the book ends with an Epilogue from 2007, in which all the plot strands are tied together.
Discussion: The prose in this story is a bit awkward, but I do not know if that is because of differences in the way the various cultures express thoughts, or translation issues, or just a result of a writer not evincing as much skill with dialogue as other writers. There was also a case of InstaLove that didn’t seem too persuasive. Nevertheless, the story has a lot of good elements. It was so interesting to see how a female detective would be treated in a country in which the place of women is not as well accepted as it is the U.S., and how the detectives had to be aware of, and careful to cater to, the religious sensibilities of the suspects and witnesses. It was also very informative to read about the situation in Greece both before and after World War II.
Evaluation: This book is not without some faults in terms of quality of prose, but has so much to offer in terms of cultural and historical enlightenment that I feel it is worth reading.
April 23, 2010
I enjoyed the combination of mystery and romance but being a history buff it was the historical aspect of the book that most intrigued me.
Chasen is a natural storyteller making it easy to follow the book as it took us through both modern times and the past. Chasen's knowledge of the Jewish community is evident in her descriptions throughout the book. I thoroughly enjoyed being introduced to a culture that I previously had little knowledge of.
Chasen is a natural storyteller making it easy to follow the book as it took us through both modern times and the past. Chasen's knowledge of the Jewish community is evident in her descriptions throughout the book. I thoroughly enjoyed being introduced to a culture that I previously had little knowledge of.
May 29, 2010
Ribbons for Their Hair is a quick read and alternates between present day Israel and Greece during WWII. It weaves the story of a kidnapped three year old child with the history of her father's family. I found the story hard to believe with too many coincidences, underdeveloped characters and storylines, and a very pat happy ending.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews