Preview of David and Jonathan Summary:

David and Jonathan is a dense, complex novel that deals with multiple issues: the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, war, guilt, family life, friendship, coming of age, and sexual, cultural, and racial identity. Henry Marr and Jonathan Nafiche, intelligent sixteen-yearolds, have been friends since fifth grade in spite of their different backgrounds. Henry is from a staid New England family whose maternal ancestors arrived in America on the Mayflower. His mother is a teacher, and his father is a financially unsuccessful musical composer. The family is somewhat estranged from the Chapin grandmother who is wealthy but who does not approve of Henry's father. The Marr family is reserved and stoic, and Henry turns to Jonathan and the Nafiche family for most of his nurturing.

Jonathan is Jewish, and his is an extended family formed from the political turmoil of the 1930s. His mother, then a widow with two small children, married...