Unearthed

As child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the shtetl, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl's cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna's Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman, a star at the center of a Jewish artistic Mecca who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic family and community to play roles as prostitutes and bell hops and lovers and nuns. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died. Before Mollie passed away, she gave Meryl a Yiddish book contained the terrible answer, but forbade her to read. And for years, Meryl obeyed. Unearthed is the story of Meryl's search for Franya, a mystery woven into a family memoir, a timely history of hatred and resistance. Through