Her Sister's Tattoo

February 15, 2020
Two devoted sisters become estranged after an incident at a Vietnam protest march in 1968. Raised by activist parents in Detroit, Rosa and Esther are committed to the anti-war cause. Rosa--fierce, headstrong, and unforgiving--has always exerted a strong pull on her quiet, more pliant younger sister. At the march, in a tear-gas haze, the sisters attack a row of baton-wielding mounted cops, with tragic, unforeseeable consequences. Rosa eventually goes to jail. Esther, the mother of a 5-month-old child, accepts a plea bargain and testifies at her sister's trials. The novel follows the two women for several decades, charting the fallout from their painful rift and the different paths they choose. Author Meeropol (Kinship of Clover, 2017, etc.) is married to the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, a fellow spy, delivered strong testimony against the couple in court--suggesting a whiff of similarity between the Rosenberg saga and this novel. But Greenglass later admitted to lying on the stand; Esther, while denounced by her sister, is basically telling the truth. In any case, the book seems more concerned with the toll of political activism on families than with the aftereffects of true treachery. Though the end of the novel is never in serious doubt, it takes a while to get there. There are unlikely plot turns (Rosa's second pregnancy) and a number of awkward moments (the daughters of the two sisters meet for the first time, not quite by accident). Still, the author writes knowingly about left-wing politics from the vantage point of an insider, and she also writes poignant domestic scenes. A sprawling novel, uneven and overlong yet moving at times.

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