This thought-provoking, flawed novel does at least one thing very well: It makes you think about spiritual connections, even if (as in my case), you don’t have a spiritual bone in your body.

The story begins in Berlin, November 1938. Anyone familiar with that dateline immediately goes uh-oh, for it’s the time of Kristallnacht, "Night of the Broken Glass," the infamous pogrom. Sure enough, Walter Westhaus loses his father and fiancée to murderous thugs; Walter escapes only by hiding under the bed.

By chance, he winds up in Bombay, where he studies at Rabindrath Tagore’s ashram. A shattered soul wrapped around a brilliant mind, Walter finishes out the war there, and in 1946, a religious scholar who admires him brings him to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

Though he has no patience for the nuts and bolts of rabbinic study, Walter’s ability to find meaningful correspondences between Eastern and Jewish teachings sets open minds on fire. One mind not quite open enough belongs to Sol Kerem, a rabbinical student of whom everyone expects great things. At first, Sol seeks out Walter as someone with whom to study the sacred texts, only to reject him. However, Sol’s spirited fiancée, Rosalie, gets more than a little closer.

Rosalie, the novel’s only fully developed character, literally embodies the essential struggle of religious life. She’s the battleground where physical desire, belief, practice, and longing for opposed experiences twist her every which way. The retrospective prologue, voiced by her youngest child, Maya, now studying for the rabbinate herself, declares that Walter, Sol, and her mother have an unusual bond.

Return to 1946, add Sol’s reluctant refusal to have premarital sex, and you can guess that Rosalie will have an affair with Walter, who understands physical passion but can’t give her anything else, being largely aimless and stuck in Kristallnacht.

This is a deep dilemma, which Gottlieb explores with skill. Where does desire figure in a religious life, and what does it truly mean? Are certain desires wrong because the Torah says so? These questions and others bedevil Rosalie constantly. As a reader, I have to reflect along with her, and though I come up with different answers, her story makes me think.

I also like that for once, here’s a novel in which Jewish characters exist in more than name. So many authors borrow Judaism only so that their characters face bigotry but are conveniently secular, in many ways living like anyone else, with scant thought for or tension over the identity for which they’re being persecuted. Not here. Gottlieb portrays observance like a second skin, not just to re-create credibly a belief system or lifestyle, but so that she can grapple with what an observant life means.

That said, The Beautiful Possible remains unsatisfying. Maya’s prologue nearly spells out that she’s Walter’s child, so you’re not surprised when Rosalie and Walter’s affair continues intermittently through the years. Since Sol also feels attracted to Walter, an impulse he reveals once and suppresses forever, potential conflicts are ready to explode in all directions.

But both men, with Rosalie’s collusion, plant themselves firmly on their volcanoes and never budge. Sol seems like a stereotypical intellectual cleric, incapable of reaching his congregants, while Walter’s somehow able to sleep with any woman he fancies and write book after famous book, without caring much or even breaking a sweat.

I kept wanting the three main characters to duke things out, not leave themselves to Maya to decipher. I get that Gottlieb means to say that Rosalie’s dilemma about body, soul, belief, and observance is unresolvable, and that Maya’s rabbinical studies will force her to repeat the cycle. But to say that these conflicts are ongoing, and the issues too large to decide, isn’t new. And setting up a conflict that never occurs feels like trickery. ( )

This is the story of the intertwined relationship between a young rabbi, his wife, and a German Jewish refugee. In beautiful, transparent prose, it explores ideas of what it means to be engaged with both the longings of the heart and the life of the mind, while having to live in the practical world. In a way, what I enjoyed most about this story was its assumption that the questions we pose are as important as the answers. A lovely, satisfying read. ( )

I loved this book. There are so many tabs sticking out of it where I marked passages, such as , "But does forever refer to a unit of time or a condition of the heart?" to "I can smell your life on your body. Your real life."

This is a love story of people and a love story of words, passionately charged, beautifully told. Gottlieb imagines the life of a young rabbi with such detail for the time period, you can feel yourself in seminary, in shul. Her imagery is lyrical and the characters are so well drawn and oh so flawed. Don't read this if infidelity and sexual content disturb you.

There are a couple of missteps where events happen predictably or just the extreme opposite, so sudden that I had to flip back as I thought I may have missed something. But for a first novel this is most exceptional and a favorite for me. The prose is so descriptive I can still smell the cardamom and see the Ganges. The spiritual philosophy is as heady to the senses. This is a writer to watch.

Copy provided by TLC BOOK TOURS ( )

This book starts in Germany during Hitler’s rise with a young man named Walter, his fiancee Sonia and his father all living in an apartment. Walter and Sonia are making plans to leave and go to Palestine as it’s not really an ideal place for Jews. Plans are just coming together when Walter’s father and Sonia are killed and Walter finds himself alone. He leaves intending to follow the plan but he ends up in India instead of Palestine. He follows a man in a felt hat off of the boat and his life changes its course.

In New York Rosalie and Sol are engaged to be married. Sol is finishing his schooling to be a Rabbi and Rosalie is looking forward to being a wife and mother. Into this peaceful existence comes Walter who is brought to the Seminary to study by the man in the felt hat who studies religions and wants Walter to be his protege. Walter befriends both Sol and Rosalie. First Sol as they study together and challenge each other. Then Rosalie and she finds so very different from Sol. She soon finds herself falling in love with Walter and he with her. What she doesn’t know is that Sol also loves Walter.

Sol and Rosalie marry and start having children but all is not as they dreamed. Sol is a rabbi but he is not fulfilled by his calling. Rosalie is a wife and mother but she is not fulfilled by this life she always thought she wanted. Both long for the excitement that Walter brought into their lives. He does pass in and out but he doesn’t stay long.

I’m making it all sound so mundane and ordinary but it’s not. The book is full of life and love and complications. It’s got heartache, joy and the minutia of everyday life. People live, they love and they die and it’s messy and real. The writing is magical and full of bits of Jewish mysticism and lessons from the Torah. What I loved most was how real the book was. The only weakness at all in the writing of Sol and Rosalie’s sons. They were underdeveloped and seemed there just so that they could have children. But beyond that minor complaint I truly enjoyed this book – another one that stretched my reading boundaries this year. ( )