MARIANNE OF THE SNOW

 A Psychological Novel on Shellshock Victims

 Hadassa Ashdot

Army psychologist Hadassa Ashdot has written a moving novel about the healing power of love and desire, about blind hatred and killing that destroy all good, about the longing for limitless freedom as opposed to cultural and social restrictions and taboos, and about deep loss giving way to light and hope.

The story revolves around three Israeli fighters: Nadav, a medic and disillusioned Kibbutz member, and his friends David, enlisted man and one of Israel's “socially disadvantaged”, and Osama, the unit commander who comes from a small Druze village and is a member of this unique minority that serves in the Israeli army.

The three are hiding in a cypress forest in Lebanon, where Osama is critically wounded, waiting for an army helicopter to come and rescue them. During their four days of desperate anticipation, the forest where they have taken refuge becomes a fateful and symbolic death trap in which their lives and fates are intertwined. By the time the helicopter arrives, two of the men lay dead, and Nadav, the protagonist, experiences first-hand the trauma of losing friends to war.

Shaken by his friends' deaths and the horrific war experience that has turned his world upside down, Nadav leaves Marianne, the girl he loves, and sets out on a trek of self-purification in the Himalayas. But no salvation awaits him there. After being buried in a snow avalanche, from which he was rescued bruised and broken, he sinks into darkness and depression, enduring years of living death in an abyss of despair. Love, ultimately, proves to be the light at the end of the tunnel through which Nadav makes his way back to life - love, the only force capable of healing the deep wound that the war bestowed upon him.

Marianne, a Finnish volunteer at the kibbutz, is the woman Nadav loved and left; but she nevertheless accompanies him through the Himalayan snows to which he escapes in an attempt to free himself of the pain and guilt of his friends' deaths. Nadav rediscovers Marianne in the calm affection of middle age, in the snows of Finland, and she is the balm that finally helps soothe the wounds of war.

About the author, Hadassa Ashdot, see Borrowed Identity.