This book manages to explore the world of comic books, Jewish flight from World War II-era Europe, and the magic of escapism (think Houdini), among other things.
The author imagines a tiny Jewish town in modern-day Poland called Kreskol that somehow got cut off from the outside world and survived the Holocaust unscathed, with its customs and traditions intact. When the shtetl sends Yankel, a hapless, functionally illiterate young man, to ask for the government’s help in locating a missing couple, he is soon confined to a mental hospital while the powers-that-be try to determine if he’s a madman.
In 2003, a mystery is created when an unsigned postcard, possibly from the 1940s, arrives with the current mail. It is left to Anne to dig into her family’s past, questioning her mother, family members, friends, and associates, and seeking the help of a private detective, a graphologist, and many others to unravel this. Her quest will take her back to the history of the Rabinovitch family and their flight from Russia after the revolution.
When college friends in the 1990s start a company and make a video game, they don't realize the impact it will have on the rest of their lives.
