In her novel Love and Treasure, Israeli-born American Ayelet Waldman brings their plight into focus.
The story is primarily about two American Jews, Jack Wiseman and his granddaughter Natalie Stein.
In 1945, Wiseman was an infantry captain in Salzburg guarding a trainload of Hungarians' possessions looted by the Germans. He takes one item, a peacock pendant, back to the United States and when he is dying, asks Natalie to find its rightful owner.
Natalie goes to Budapest, links up with an Israeli-born American hunting art stolen by the Nazis and along the way begins to right the things that are wrong in her own life.
Add a pioneering psychiatrist in 1914 Budapest and the novel is as intricate as any Russian doll, each layer uncovering another aspect of a rich story linked by the peacock pendant.
- Gillian Vine is a Dunedin journalist.
