As Hitler's Germany wages war on the Jewish people, a boy named Roger is hidden away in a convent and baptized into the Catholic Church. When an aunt seeks to reclaim him after the war, the church proves reluctant to give him up. Meanwhile, a girl named Ana and her brother Oskar are rescued from the ghetto and sent to live with protective strangers in the Polish countryside. Finding themselves orphaned, they and Roger eventually make their way to Israel where further revelations await. Rosner's lyricism in this novel is capacious enough for both the mundane world and the world of faith; in her luminous poetic prose, the two seem to become one. (BH)