The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

When Aron was eight years old, his large Jewish family moved from their impoverished Polish village to Warsaw so his father could take a better job. His older brothers also found work and his mother took in laundry. Aron and his younger brother attended school. But their relatively better circumstances did not last long. The German army soon marched into Poland and into Warsaw. Eventually they established the Warsaw Ghetto, literally walling in the Jewish population, forcing 400,000 people into a small area of the city. Families had to double and triple up. Not only shelter, but food, medicine, fuel and clothing were in very short supply. Families began to rely on their smallest children for support. The children were able to leave the ghetto through small openings in the wall and then return, smuggling in the necessities of life. Aron joined a gang engaged in this activity. It was risky labor and getting caught could be fatal. Consequently, life became cheap. The children became inured to the pain and death of others, easily betraying and sacrificing cohorts to protect themselves. Aron lost all the members of his family, one by one, to disease and deportation. Then his fellow gang members either died or turned against him. Eventually he was put out of his own home by a squatter family and nearly died on the streets. Only the efforts of Dr. Janusz Korczak, a real life hero who advocated for and protected children even before the war, saved his life. Dr. Korczak found and brought Aron into his orphanage. Eventually, under the patient care of the doctor, Aron recovered his strength and, more importantly, his ability to empathize with others. He became a valuable assistant to Korczak, accompanying him on the begging excursions needed to feed the orphans. All in the ghetto were in bodily danger, but Aron’s humanity had been saved. Few stories on this subject have a happy ending but the right unhappy ending can be uplifting. 

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Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

In the summer of 1976, when London is suffering through a record-breaking heat wave and drought, Robert Riordan, a retired London banker, walks out of his home one morning to buy a newspaper. When he does not return, he creates a crisis requiring his three adult children to return to the family home.  Although his wife, Gretta, claims he was happy in his retirement, his emptied bank account reveals his vanishing to be premeditated and of his own volition. The family is not close and the children each have their own troubling secrets. Michael Francis, oldest child and only son, is failing in his personal and professional life. Monica, the responsible, perfect daughter, has similar problems. And Aoife, the difficult, late-in-life baby, who went through childhood with undiagnosed learning disabilities, is hiding the fact that she cannot read from family, friends and employers.  Monica and Aoife also have a secret between them that has destroyed their relationship. And, obviously, Robert has a secret reason for disappearing. But, in the course of searching for some clue of why their father left or where he might have gone, the children discover that their parents have keeping the biggest, most astounding secret of all. Using the small bit of information they are able to glean from their mother, their search takes them to the family home in Ireland.  Here they find answers to their questions and, perhaps, solutions to their problems. In INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, author Maggie O’Farrell is able to make the reader understand this dysfunctional family (disappointed mother, distant father, angry children). We pull for them to come together and overlook each other’s weaknesses.  

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