In the Shadow of History: A story of a French family in America The central characters of this story are secular, assimilated French Jews, their Jewishness defined primarily by the society that turned against them. The story takes the reader through the first half of the 20th century, based on letters and documents of the time, to trace two family histories and the marriage that linked them. It moves from Alsace to Mexico and from Paris to San Francisco; the occupation of Alsace in 1870, the chaos of the Mexican revolution of 1910-13 and each of the world wars touched one or both families. There is psychological drama – personal tragedy and its aftermath, a mother’s manipulation of one daughter, the conversion and entry into a convent of another – and evidence that a grandmother lived a lie. We learn of the experience of the families left in Paris in the 1940s, deportations, resistance, deprivation and a return to everyday concerns. In San Francisco, the local newspapers detail a grandfather’s death on the coastal cliffs, while a father’s long and productive business career is elided by his successors. Over the period covered the marriage at its center slowly unravels. A picture of the past emerges, but some mysteries remain unsolved.