David R. Gillham's latest novel, Shadows of Berlin, opens in New York City in 1955. Rachel, a young Jewish woman from Berlin, has managed to avoid the horrors of Hitler's concentration camps but remains scarred by her experiences during World War II. She has married Aaron, a native New Yorker, and has tried to adopt the role of American housewife, but is unable to move beyond the guilt she feels for her actions a decade ago in Germany. The reappearance of a painting thought destroyed, a masterpiece painted by her mother, sends Rachel reeling, ultimately forcing her to come to terms with her past.

The book's premise is quite absorbing, as the author skillfully reveals Rachel's past slowly over the course of the novel. Readers learn early on, for example, that she is seeing a psychiatrist because of something referred to as the Episode, but we don't know what the Episode was for ...