A remarkably creative novel in which Foer weaves two simultaneous narratives arising from a 23 year old American’s trip to Ukraine to find one Augustine, a woman who protected his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII. This story is told by the Ukrainian translator Alexander Perchov who along with his grandfather and their dog, Sammy Davis Junior Junior pick up the “hero” in Lutsk and drive him to find the shtetl of Trachimbrod the origin of his family. In alternating chapters the hero tells the story of Trachimbrod, a combination of the river Brod from which his great-great-etc grandmother was named and Trachim, the Ur ancestor whose death in the wagon in the river started the whole story. The richness and craziness of shtetl life is richly conveyed and the final intersection between the two stories provides a tragic conclusion to this powerful and moving Holocaust novel.