House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elon

Book Club discussion led by Amy Schottland

Review:

This fictional tale presents a renowned author Yoel Blum as he reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to meet with his Dutch publisher, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. An unsettling discovery launches him into a fervent search for the truth, revealing Amsterdam’s dark wartime history and the underground networks which hid Jewish children away from danger—but at a cost. The deeper into the past Yoel digs, the better he understands his mother’s silence, and the more urgent the question that has unconsciously haunted him for a lifetime—Who am I?—becomes. Evocative, insightful, and deeply resonant, “House on Endless Waters” beautifully illustrates the complex nature of identity and belonging, and the inextricability of past and present.