Visitation

This brief novel, the translation of a best seller in Germany, covers the sweep of the 20th century through the story of a small piece of land bordering a lake outside Berlin. The tale's origins seem folkloric but begin only 100 years before, when one of the landowner's daughters goes mad and wanders shoeless along the shore. An architect purchases the property and builds a unique home with intricate closets, a painted antique door, and stained-glass windows. The house next door is owned by a Jewish family; caught up in the nightmare of the Holocaust, some escape, some do not. The house survives invading Soviets, but the Communist takeover, the moribund economy that results, and ownership disputes that leave the house empty and unmaintained for years finally destroy it and the family connections it forged.