In the Memory of the Forest ─ A Novel

When the body of Tomek, a young distillery worker, is found brutally murdered in the forest outside Jadowia in Poland, his boyhood friend, Leszek, decides to uncover the mystery behind Tomek?s death. Assuming the role of amateur sleuth, Leszek embarks on a clue-finding mission that takes him from country to city, into the grimy offices of once-powerful bureaucrats, and face-to-face with the Catholic Church?s pious and impotent priests. And as Leszek moves closer to the truth, he is confronted with another strange mystery: the disappearance of stones from the foundations of the town?s oldest houses. The further Leszek is drawn into this mystery, the deeper into the past he must search for answers about his people, the grim tragedy of the Holocaust, and ultimately, his own identity. In the Memory of the Forest is a haunting, evocative novel that explores the impact of a murder on a community, and of history and the fate of the Jews in Poland during World War II on a people.

Charles T. Powers (1943-1996) was a journalist for The New York Times for more than twenty years. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, he served as the newspaper?s Eastern European Bureau Chief in Warsaw. For the last five years of his life, he lived in Bennington, Vermont, where he completed this novel.