The Umbrella Maker’s Son

Film producer Lending debuts with a wrenching story of love and displacement in Poland after the 1939 Nazi invasion. Reuven Berkovitz, 17, works for his father Lev in Krakow, making bespoke umbrellas with intricately carved handles. He’s recently fallen in love with Zelda Abramovitch, who shares with him an appreciation for art and literature. His happiness ends when the Nazis invade, subjecting Jewish households to coal rationing, forcing Lev to sell his business, and assigning father and son to grueling labor repairing train tracks. Already terrorized by the Nazis’ capricious acts of violence, Reuven gets another shock when he visits Zelda’s family home and finds it occupied by strangers. He devotes himself to locating the Abramovitchs, but hasn’t made any progress by the time he’s forced to flee with his family to Russian-occupied eastern Poland, a grueling and catastrophic journey during which all the Berkovitzes but Reuven are killed by German soldiers. He’s given shelter by a farmer before regaining the strength to resume his quest to find Zelda, which, after many more harrowing events, brings him back to Krakow. Lending eschews the sentimentality common to much recent Holocaust fiction, instead bringing the horrors of the period to visceral life with many scenes of graphic violence. It’s not for the faint of heart. (Feb.)