Anna is an American Jewish psychotherapist who lives in Vienna. Nearly twenty-five years after her father's untimely death, she is plagued by nightmares and feels compelled to solve the enigma of his unpublished, autobiographical novella, Tell Marvin. Dan Rosenberg, a New York attorney, is approached by a widowed Holocaust survivor who begs him to represent her son, Marvin. After returning safely from the war in Vietnam, he had been arrested on drug charges and imprisoned in Franco's Spain. Although Marvin faces a harsh sentence, he is headstrong and reluctant to accept the clever escape plan that Rosenberg devises for him with the support of the US consul. Interweaving Tell Marvin with Anna's own narrative, Case Unclosable presents the perspective of a bilingual American who has resided in Austria for forty years. As a psychotherapist with Austrian clientele, she is able to deliver insights that exceed those found in novels written by the European-born children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Case Unclosable lifts Austria's blanket of denial and affords unique awareness about one of modern history's unclosable chapters. Anna sets out to draw parallels between Marvin's self-endangering episode in fascist Spain and her own venturesome decision to settle in Austria, a self-proclaimed "island of bliss" that thrives on the myth of having been Hitler's victim, as popularized in "The Sound of Music." Yet the more she ponders her experiences of anti-Semitism and the unforeseeable risks that she-like Marvin-took by underestimating the political situation in her adopted country, the more she discovers the striking similarities between her father's vigilant, discerning traits and her own. Anna embraces her family history, probes her relationship with her father, and seeks parallels between the battles he fought and the conflicted life she was leading as a Jew in a historically anti-Semitic country. The two narratives tell the multifaceted story of Anna's coming to terms with her uncertainties and her life-changing decision to leave New York and live abroad. Case Unclosable examines the effects of the Holocaust on the second and third generations, the dynamics of family history, and intergenerational issues. Anyone interested in gaining deeper insight by considering life's ambivalences in a broader historical context will be fascinated by this novel.
