And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories of a Family

Review by Jewish Book World, Winter 2009

"This sprawling, warm-hearted story spans six continents and one
 hundred years, from the 1900 Sabbath table of Reizl and Lazar Solomon
 and their young sons, in Radautz, Bukovina, to a glorious millennial
 reunion in Paris.

 "Dawid presents the family history in twenty-four accounts of varying
 length, rich in personal vignettes though mindful of the overriding
 historical arc. Here is Hans, a grandson of Reizl and Lazar, 'resident
 alien' of Tientsin, North China,1939; Berthold, another grandson, on
 day 555 of his imprisonment in a Communist prison cell, 1950;
 great-granddaughters Toni and Marguerite, 'les Belles Jumelles,'
 internationally acclaimed Belgian duo-pianists, 1990s.

 "The final story, set in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, is an amazing set
 piece. From far-flung corners of the world, e.g., Dakar, Liverpool,
 Haifa, San Francisco, Saigon, Moscow, Capetown, Rio, Brussels, Dublin,
 New York, the descendants of Reizl and Lazar -- gay, straight,
 multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-talented -- assemble
 in boisterous celebration of the ninety-second birthday of Freda,
 granddaughter of Reizl and Lazar, oldest surviving member of the
 family, and the birth of the new millennium."