The Devil's Vacation by Steven Ehrlick is a multi-generational story that follows the life of Miriam Seligmann, a 17th century young woman who lives in the Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto with her father, Shlomo. After falling deathly ill, she is brought back to health by Seth, a mysterious, self-proclaimed alchemist. Through Seth, Miriam accesses a time machine that also serves as a multi-dimensional portal. Miriam discovers that she is constantly drawn to descendants who live on an alternate earth. She surreptitiously helps them survive and flourish, countering, as best she can, the evil that enters their lives. In so doing, she becomes involved in Seth's plan to, in essence, play god and alter the history of the Jews in both worlds. And it is not long after her first experience in the time machine that Miriam will also discover that she has the ability to access the astral plane and appear in the lives of her descendants as a spectral presence. Miriam's sporadic visitations in the lives of her progeny becomes the stuff of dynastic legend.
Employing magical realism, the story travels through many generations, many centuries, from biblical times to the near past. We meet many of Miriam's descendants along the way. Peter Selig, born in the 1950's, is a troubled and confused young man who has spent his teens in a mental institution. He first experiences Miriam while on an acid trip in Miami Beach. Peter's father, Moishe Selig, spent WWII as a partisan in a Polish forest group, exacting revenge on the Nazis for the murder of his family. Moishe later becomes a wealthy diamond magnate and reluctant time traveller, where he unwittingly finds himself visiting the plain of Hebron in second century B.C. Noah Selig is Peter's grandson, a journalist obsessed with discovering his family's secrets, and an unwitting pawn in an audacious plan, centuries in the making. Then there is Abdelina, Miriam's daughter, whose extraordinary capabilities have the inhabitants of the ghetto believing she is a witch. In Seth - alchemist, archeologist, time traveller and historian - we meet a man from another dimensional reality, another earth, similar to Miriam's world, but with faintly different histories, no more so than regarding the fate of the Jews. Seth's mission is to covertly massage the historical arc of the Jews in both worlds to ensure their continued survival.
The Devil's Vacation deals with the themes of Jewish resiliency in the face of constant repression and subjugation. It explores the anti-Jewish zeitgeist of different times and in different countries. It is also a story of love - love of family, of country, of friendship, and its ability to alleviate human suffering.
