The Apothecary.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

The Apothecary tells the story of Felix, a pharmacist like his father, and his sister, Sussel. It follows his life and those of several other people from the city of Czernowitz during the Second World War, via Bucharest, to Vienna in the 1960s.

Felix saves a young Jewish girl, Shainah, from being deported by the Russians, giving her into the care of a pastor whose wife, Rosy, and daughter, Martina—Felix’s childhood sweetheart—had chosen to live in safety in Germany. Felix also procures the release of his own parents from cattle cars destined for the concentration camps. When the German army moves into Czernowitz, Felix flees into the Caucasus Mountains to save his own life.

Twenty years later, he finds Martina living in Vienna and married to Gerhardt, a German soldier wracked with guilt over his actions in Czernowitz during the war. The ensuing stories of the three are intertwined with those of Shainah’s daughter, Maria, Maria’s son, Alexander, and a host of others. Following Gerhardt’s death, Martina inherits his not-inconsiderable fortune. Maria, who was charged with restoring to Felix a special family treasure her mother had passed on to her, finally does so just before she, Felix, Martina, and Alexander leave for Canada to join Felix’s sister, Sussel.

This is the third book in a trilogy dealing with Jewish life in cosmopolitan cities and in an East European village in the first half of the 20th century. In writing it, author Martha Blum, herself a pharmacist from Czernowitz, has clearly drawn from life experiences before emigrating to Canada. Her characters are vividly rendered and the descriptions of both fictional and historical events, and of places and lifestyles, are rich indeed. This very richness demands concentrated reading, though it may be easier to follow the plot’s intricacies if one has previously read The Walnut Tree. What is perhaps even more impressive is that Blum, who died in December 2007, was 93 when The Apothecary was published in 2006, the year she also received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Saskatchewan. Recommended.