All in the Telling

"The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember." All in the Telling, a novel by Saul Rubinek, weaves together a true story of miraculous survival, a murder mystery, an operatic family drama, and undying romance. Also, it's very funny. When Saul falls in love with a non-Jewish woman, he discovers his immigrant, Holocaust-survivor parents are not as "cool with it" as he said they'd be. Their reaction is biblical. Desperate to fix his relationship with his parents, he lies and tells them he's writing a book about their story of love and survival. In chronicling their lives, Saul discovers their extraordinary loyalty and bravery-but also the lies, secrets, and deceptions buried in his family's past. It is a story that relates to all families affected by the trauma of war and the immigrant experience through the generations, no matter who they are or where they are from.