by Laura Blumenfeld
David Blumenfeld, a tourist, was returning from prayers at the Western Wall in 1986 when a member of the rebel faction of the PLO, a hidden gunman, fired one shot at him and fled. The bullet tore across Rabbi Blumenfeld’s skull but fortunately did no permanent damage. Fifteen years later, his daughter, Laura Blumenfeld, a Washington Post reporter and widely published journalist, decides to spend her honeymoon year in Jerusalem with a not-so-secret agenda: to track down her father’s attacker, to try to understand his life and to have him understand how his shot altered the life of her family. Laura visits the assailant’s family several times without revealing her personal connection to the event. One day she receives a letter the gunman has written to her from prison.