Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America.

In The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick's wrenching tale of a Holocaust survivor trapped in Miami Beach, the protagonist, Rosa Lublin, attempts to make sense of her life. Confiding in Persky, a new-found friend, she allows as how cats have nine lives, "but we - we're less than cats, we got three. The life before, the life during, the life after" (p. 58). When Persky registers some confusion, Lublin clarifies matters by explaining "the life after is now. The life before is our real life, at home, where we was born" (p. 58).

Powerful and evocative, fictionalized accounts of the Holocaust survivor's encounter with the New World like those crafted by Ozick or I. B. Singer pale by comparison …