On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?” Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path. The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a reader, you’ll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You’ll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father’s unnerving final demands.
