Until the Dawn's Light

Celebrated Israeli author Appelfeld (Blooms of Darkness) offers a tale of repression, brutality, and the quest for survival among rural Austria's Jewish population in the early 1900s. Successful in school, intelligent young Blanca dreams of studying mathematics at the university. Her Jewish parents no longer practice their faith, whereas her grandmother is a believer in strict religious tradition. In school, Blanca is drawn to a physically large and mentally deficient young man named Adolf Hammer and gives up her plans for further study to marry him. Since he is a Christian and anti-Semitic, she renounces her faith, as many others did at this time in the history of European Jewish assimilation. Soon, however, Adolf establishes a pattern of drinking and physical and verbal abuse. When Blanca gives birth to a son, Otto, who is sick and weak, Adolf and his family blame his poor health on his Jewish lineage, and Adolf's brutality increases. Finally, Blanca must take matters into her own hands.