The Weight of Ink

The action of the novel unfolds in London in the 1660s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century; it intertwines the stories of two women: Esther Velasquez, a refugee from Amsterdam who becomes a scribe for a blind rabbi... shortly before the plague invades London, and Professor Helen Watt, who, despite her age and poor health, still burns with passion for history. When a former student invites Helen to examine a stash of accidentally discovered seventeenth-century documents, she recruits Aaron Levy, an impatient but charming graduate student from America, as her assistant and embarks on the last project of her academic career: to ascertain the identity of the mysterious scribe who signs only with the letter 'aleph.' Despite the centuries that separate the heroines, both must make difficult choices and sacrifices to reconcile the lives of the heart and the mind.