An Israeli couple’s emotional struggle in the early days of the Yom Kippur War

Amalia and Daniel find their lives thrown into utter chaos when the Yom Kippur War breaks out in October 1973. Amalia volunteers in the burn ward of a military hospital, where she witnesses the carnage firsthand. A badly injured, unidentified soldier captures her attention, and she fights to keep him alive as her husband, an undercover intelligence officer, pursues his own mission on the front lines in the Egyptian campaign.

The juxtaposition of Amalia’s life as a civilian doing her best to contribute to the war effort with her husband’s dangerous search for an intelligence operative behind enemy lines illustrates both the mundaneness and the menace of war. In this somber, touching, and reflective novel, Ya’el Dayan compellingly depicts the strength and survival of one couple’s marital bond under the most harrowing and heartbreaking of circumstances.