An Address in Ams­ter­dam is an his­tor­i­cal nov­el about a young Jew­ish woman, Rachel Klein, who risks her life in the anti-Nazi under­ground. Based on 13 years of research, the book explores how a polite doctor’s daugh­ter finds the courage to resist, live and love, against the back­drop of a rad­i­cal­ly chang­ing city. Ams­ter­dam had been a sanc­tu­ary for Jew­ish peo­ple since the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion. When the Nazis invade, Rachel’s Ger­man-born father is sure the fam­i­ly is safe, while her rad­i­cal moth­er is alarmed. Rachel, then 18, has to decide for her­self how seri­ous­ly to take the grad­ual but rad­i­cal changes in the ​“world’s most lib­er­al city.” Mean­while, she falls in love, and when her stu­dent activist boyfriend must dis­ap­pear, Rachel decides she has to take action. For 18 months she does increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous work as a mes­sen­ger, until the roundups inten­si­fy to the point that she and her par­ents go into hid­ing. The dank base­ment where they are hid­den is an unlike­ly place for her to meet a new man, but she does.