Ester's Child
This sweeping, overwrought and overwritten saga of the  modern-day Jewish exodus is the fiction debut of the bestselling  author of Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in  Saudi Arabia. Opening in Paris during the summer of 1938 and  closing in Jerusalem in June 1983, the historical melodrama  traces two Jewish families, the Gales and the Steins, from their  near extinction in 1939 during Hitler's invasion of Warsaw and  the ensuing atrocities of the Holocaust. Young Joseph Gale and  his wife, Ester Stein, are practically the only survivors, and  in 1948, they travel to Palestine. A counterplot chronicles the  displacement of an Arab family, the Antouns, from their home in  Haifa by Jewish forces in the same year, resulting in their  34-year-long exile in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut,  Lebanon, ending with their deaths in the  Israeli-orchestrated  Shatila massacre during the Lebanese civil war in 1982. There is  a shadowy subplot involving Friedrich Kleist, a former young  Nazi SS officer who took part in the Nazi invasion of Poland. A  second generation two Gale children, an Antoun son and a Kleist  daughter find their fortunes tortuously interwoven as the novel  proceeds to an unlikely, over-the-top conclusion, involving  questions of mistaken parentage, coincidence and the revelation  of wartime horrors. Overlooking artless writing, loyal Sasson  fans will likely send this pulpy tapestry of war-torn families  and bloodthirsty ethnic and religious ideologies straight to the  bestseller list. 100,000 first printing; $200,000 ad/promo;  20-city author tour. (Sept.)Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.