The Waiting Room captures the sights, sounds, accents, and animosities
of a country overflowing with stories. Dina is a family doctor living in
the melting-pot city of Haifa, Israel. Born in Australia in a Jewish
enclave of Melbourne to Holocaust survivors, Dina left behind a
childhood marred by misery and the tragedies of the past to build a new
life for herself in the Promised Land. After starting a family of her
own, she finds her life falling apart beneath the demands of her
eccentric patients, a marriage starting to fray, the ever-present threat
of terrorist attack and the ghost of her mother, haunting her with
memories that Dina would prefer to leave on the other side of the world.
Leah Kaminsky plumbs the depths of her characters' memories, both the
sweet and the heart-wrenching, reaching back in a single climactic day
through six decades and across three continents to uncover a truth that
could save Dina's sanity--and her life.