Did Chaim Lern­er, acclaimed Israeli author and Holo­caust sur­vivor jump to his death in 1983, thir­ty-eight years after sur­viv­ing Auschwitz? If so, was it trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries final­ly catch­ing up to him? Or despair over Holo­caust deniers? Or ordi­nary, dif­fi­cult health issues — an aching hip, a dam­aged knee? Or sim­ply a dead­ly episode of depres­sion?

Or was it mur­der?

In 2005, Judah Loeb, Lerner’s for­mer stu­dent and now a strug­gling Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and sin­gle father, trav­els to Jerusalem to inves­ti­gate Lerner’s death. He drags along his fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, Han­nah, and they team up with Char­lie, Judah’s for­mer Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty room­mate, now a Jerusalem homi­cide detec­tive. Their inves­ti­ga­tion takes them through the dark­er cor­ners of the Israeli psy­che, where they uncov­er secrets that threat­en to destroy Lerner’s rep­u­ta­tion and alter Jew­ish his­to­ry. While prob­ing the mys­ter­ies of Israel’s past, they encounter per­son­al betray­al, heart­break, and the frag­ile pos­si­bil­i­ties of for­give­ness and redemption.