Daniel grows up constantly hearing from his relatives –Jewish immigrants from the distant Bolechow in Ukraine– how much he resembles the late Uncle Smil. He also grows up listening to the family stories of his larger-than-life grandfather, in which Uncle Smil is completely absent. All he knows about the forgotten uncle, his wife, and their four beautiful daughters is that “the Nazis killed them.”

Now an adult, driven by the instinct of a “family historian” and the terrible suspicion that his grandfather’s silence hides a story of fraternal betrayal, he will embark on his own odyssey around the world to glean from the few remaining elders, former residents of Bolechow –those who survived the Holocaust– their last memories of Smil and his fate, about the death but also the life of Europe’s Jews.

“An impressive journey of discoveries, disappointments, and incomprehensible coincidences. Mendelson constructs an elaborate circular narrative. The technique pays off, showing how the Holocaust continues to affect people who did not experience it directly.” The New Yorker

“An astonishing achievement. An ineffably sad yet triumphantly victorious and joyful quest for finding. It accomplishes what many of us would do, if we possessed the skills and the obsession required to rediscover our own anonymous lost ones.” Rebecca Goldstein, New York Observer

“Mendelson dives deep into the heart of the Holocaust, deep into the heart of his family, deep into his own heart. This is a dense, rich, captivating text; as Mendelson travels across the globe to ‘find the six’, he manages to find and give voice to an entire lost world, to a lost family.” San Diego Union-Tribune