The Singing Forest (trade paperback)

Description

In attempting to bring a suspected war criminal to justice, a lawyer wrestles with power, accountability, and her Jewish identity.In a quiet forest in Belarus, two boys make a gruesome find that reveals a long-kept secret: the mass grave where Stalins police buried thousands of murder victims in the 1930s. The results of the subsequent investigation30,000 deadhas far-reaching effects, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, young lawyer Leah Jarvis finds herself tasked with an impossible case: the trial of elderly Stefan Drozd, a former member of Stalins forces, who fled his crimes in Kurapaty for a new identity in Canada. Though Leah is convinced of Drozds guilt, she needs hard facts. Determined to bring him to justice, she travels to Belarus in search of witnessesand finds herself piecing together another set of evidence: her mothers death, her fathers absence, the shadows of her Jewish heritage. Lyrical and wrenching by turns,The Singing Forestis a profound investigation of memory, truth, and the stories that tell us who we are.PRAISE FORTHE SINGING FORESTThe Kurapaty mass grave near Minsk, Belarus, was used to hide the bodies of thousands murdered by Stalins secret police from 1937 to 1941. This novel of witness tells the story of the prosecution of a war criminal hiding in Canada. There is self-discovery. There is torture and false confession. There are affidavits and dark nights of the soul. There is Leahs painful search for witnesses driven by her damaged, obstinate heart. And searingly, as McCormack writes, there are the voices of the dead who cry out, We are here. We are waiting. Know this history through your heart, through the empathetic imagination of McCormacks fiction.Kim Echlin, author ofThe Disappeared