Excerpt from Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So we are here, you and I, she hears her mother observe. Azoy, mir zenen do. Always, between them, it's Yiddish.

"Yes, Eema. We are here."

Peering at her daughter with her usual mix of curiosity and disapproval, she wonders, What is this you are doing?

"I'm drawing," Rachel tells her.

Really? Eema is skeptical. Is that what you think? This qualifies as drawing?

"Es iz a shmittshik," Rachel says and then picks out a few words from English. "A doodad, you know? A doodle."

So you may call it. But is it a waste of your God-given talent?

"And now it's about what God gives us, Eema? I thought my talent came from you. Besides, you said you had abandoned God."

Eema replies in a leaden tone, Of course! This is how a daughter speaks to her mother. Let's be correct, Rashka. I did not abandon God. God abandoned me. She expels smoke with a certain dramatic aplomb, but Rachel does not react, prompting Eema to frown at the silence. So this shmittshik? You think it serves art?

"Degas said that art is not what you see but what you make others see."

Degas, Eema scoffs. Degas was an anti-Semite and a misogynist, tsigele.

"Don't call me that. I'm not your little goat anymore."

But still stubborn as one. When will you stop sleepwalking? You've been scarred, yes. We live, we die. But in between, for those chosen, we have a duty to create.

"Very simple for you to say, Eema." Rachel's charcoal stick scratches against the paper. "You're dead."

But her eema is deaf to this fact. She clutches at the sable collar of her coat. When I was your age, Rashka, I was already a recognized artist. My work was highly valued. Hanging in the most important galleries in Berlin.

"And yet not a single painting survives. They all went up in smoke. Just like you."

As usual, you're missing my point. You have your share of talent, Rokhl. A blessing or a curse? I can't say. But why do you waste yourself?

"I'm not wasting myself, Eema. I'm protecting myself."

Forget these silly drawings. Go! Pick up your brushes. Lay color onto your palette.

"No," Rachel answers.

Open your easel and face an empty canvas!

"No," Rachel answers more forcefully. "No, I cannot. I'm sorry, I cannot do it. It will hurt me."

It will heal you!

"No! I'm afraid, Eema," she confesses, her eyes heating with tears. "I'm afraid of what will come out of me." She's startled by her tiger cat leaping up onto the table, and with that, her mother's chair empties. The smell of smoke returns to the cigarette in the ashtray. Wiping her eyes, Rachel seizes the cat. Kibbitz she calls him, because he's always sticking his nose in, always getting into the middle of things.

Escaping to America, surviving the ruins of Europe, she felt she must—must—continue as her mother's daughter. So for a period of years, she had dabbed a brush into globs of oily colors and smeared them onto canvases. "Ghosts" she called them. At first, they were only plumes of color. Whiffs of smoke. Nothing human. But gradually they began to take shape into more human forms. Of human memories. Over and over, she tried to capture the essence of what she had lost. The life of her mother? Yes. A life lost to a colorless killer, cyanide gas. The millions of lives lost. But she didn't dare confess this, even when she found a gallery. Even after the gallery was selling those small works on small canvases or Masonite board. A newspaper printed her name and called her work both challenging and promising. She was married by then, yet Aaron didn't seem to mind. He wasn't exactly an art expert, he'd confess, obviously. Still, he was impressed that a painting could actually sell for money. He'd joke about retiring to easy street now that his wife could turn a profit!

Excerpted from Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham. Copyright © 2022 by David R. Gillham. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.