If they didn’t hear from Uncle Herman for a year, they weren’t surprised. “He never writes letters. He just shows up,” her father used to complain. But late in 1939 they did get a letter. It came from London, and said he would be going to France. That had worried her father. “I don’t know how you get in there,” he’d said, “or how you get out.” Months had passed. No further word had come. They hoped he was in London. When the Blitz came, her father said: “Maybe I should hope he’s in France.”

The silence continued.

It was more than four years before they finally learned the truth. It was the only time Sarah had seen her father truly outraged, and inconsolable. It was the first time, also, that she had understood the power of grief. And seeing her father’s suffering, young though she was, she had wanted so much to protect him.

Then the Adlers did what a Jewish family does when it loses a loved one: they sat shiva.

It is a kindly custom. For seven days, unless one observes a less strict practice, family and friends come to the house bringing food and comfort. After saying the traditional Hebrew words of condolence as they enter, the visitors talk softly to the bereaved, who sit on low boxes or stools.

Sarah’s mother had covered every mirror in the house with cloth. The children all wore a black ribbon, pinned on their front, but their father ripped his shirt and sat in a corner. Many friends came by; everyone understood Daniel Adler’s grief and sought to console him. Sarah never forgot it.

“The days we sat shiva for your Uncle Herman were the worst in my life,” her mother said. “Worse even than the day I got fired.”

The day her mother got fired had always been part of family lore. It had been long before Sarah was born, before her mother married. She’d gone to work in Midtown, and got a job as a secretary in a bank. Her father had warned her not to do it, but something had prompted her to prove him wrong. With the reddish hair she had then and her blue eyes, people didn’t usually think she was Jewish. “And my name’s Susan Miller,” she said. “It was Millstein, once,” her father said. He could also have added that Miller was the third most common Jewish name in America.

But the bank had employed her without awkward questions, and for six months she’d worked there and been quite happy. True, it had meant that she didn’t observe Shabbat, but her family weren’t religious, so they didn’t mind too much.

It was a chance remark that had let her down. One Friday, she was talking to another girl who she was quite friendly with. They were talking about one of the tellers, a bad-tempered fellow who had been complaining about her friend. “Don’t mind him,” she’d told the girl, “he’s always kvetching about something.” She’d said the Yiddish word quite without thinking, hardly even realized she’d said it, though she did notice the girl looking at her oddly.