Books like By blood by Ellen Ullman

San Francisco in the mid‑1970s is a city of stark contrasts—radical feminism, lingering psychedelic excitement, and the looming threat of the Zodiac Killer. A disgraced professor, seeking redemption, takes a new post in a downtown office tower only to find himself drawn into the private world of his next‑door neighbor, a psychologist, and one of her patients. The patient, a woman in a lesbian relationship, struggles with the dissonance between her adopted WASP family and her Jewish identity. Her search for her birth mother leads her to a Catholic charity that assisted freshly baptized orphans in post‑War Germany, raising questions about the patient's roots and the Nazi Lebensborn program. The professor, intrigued and invested, secretly investigates, uncovering records from a German displaced‑persons camp and a German‑helmed therapist who adds another layer to this complex triangular relationship. Through thin walls and whispered exchanges, the professor’s academic curiosity turns into a personal mission, forcing him to confront the past, the ethics of eavesdropping, and the intertwined histories of displacement, identity, and post‑war restitution.

First publish date: 2012