A review by dlberglund
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

5.0

This tells the fictional stories-the could have beens- of some of the people who came in contact with the Sarajevo Haggadah, a real 15th century sacred Jewish text. Hannah, a book conservateur, is our main character, tasked with inspecting the book and doing some preservation and repair work on it when it is found to have escaped the 1990s Bosnian war. Hannah find details and clues in the book that send her around the world looking for answers about where the book had traveled and how it had survived the centuries. Alternating chapters tell the tales of the (again, fictional) people who had created and saved this book from war, conflict, and Inquisition. Each of them were fascinating and rang with truth. I took my time with this book, looking up details about the times and places featured, and making note of things to research later. There was one detail I had issue with, late in the book, that was an inaccurate history stretch, but otherwise, I loved this book.