The Magician’s Tale

About the Book

It is the 1940s in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland as Michal Frankel, a Jew trapped by the Nazis, records in his journal his struggle to find meaning through his activities in the resistance and his love for Rachel. Meanwhile, his teenage brother, David, has escaped the ghetto and created another family hiding in the forest. With help from two former Polish soldiers and an orphaned girl, David somehow manages to survive. Over thirty years later, David is a physician living in the United States who has realized his past may not be as easy to abandon as he once believed. After he returns to Europe to find traces of his lost family, he uncovers a secret German wartime operation that puts his life in danger. When he acquires a priceless heirloom from a defecting KGB agent, he learns it may be the key to accessing the archives and reuniting with those he once loved. But as his life comes full circle, now only time will tell if David will find a way to make his shocking war findings public for the world to see. In this historical thriller, a Polish-American Jewish doctor returns to his tortuous past in Russia and Poland to search for his lost family and unwittingly uncovers a secret that changes everything.

About the Author

R. Brooke Jeffrey MD is a Professor of Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He graduated from Princeton University with an AB degree in religion. The Magician’s Tale is his second novel.