The Tree of Life, Book One: On the Brink of the Precipice, 1939 [Paperback]

On the Brink of the Precipice, the first volume of the trilogyThe Tree of Life, describes the lives of the novel’s ten protagonists in the Lodz Ghetto before the outbreak of World War II. Chava Rosenfarb, herself a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, draws on her own history to create realistic characters who struggle daily to retain a sense of humanity and dignity despite the physical and psychological effects of ghetto life. Although the novel depicts horrendous experiences, the light of faith in the human spirit shines through this novel’s every page.

Winner of the 1972 J. J. Segal Prize and the 1979 Manger Prize for Yiddish Literature

With your work you give artistic meaning to an epoch of Jewish experience that is so unbelievably brutal that it is not possible for those who were never there to grasp the full breadth of its horrors. Your manner of conveying the ghetto life is, however, of such scope and literary power that the reader feels himself to be living with you. —Decision of the Jury for the J. J. Segal3