To The End of the Land

Ora is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from Israeli army service when he voluntarily rejoins his unit for a major offensive. In a fit of magical thinking, she takes off to hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the notifiers who might darken her door. This is comforting logic- if she cannot be told of Ofer s death, he must remain alive. Recently estranged from her husband Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion- their once best friend Avram, Ofer s true father, who was tortured as a POW during the Yom Kippur War and refused to ever know the boy. Reunited after 21 years, Ora and Avram hike the Israel Trail, a walk to the end of the land , and she gives him the gift of Ofer, unfurling the story of the family's once happy, now shattered existence - a retelling that keeps Ofer alive for both his mother and the reader. This illuminating walk places the most hideous trials of war alongside the quotidian business of raising children; never have we seen so clearly the surreality of life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens it piles on each generation anew.