"Letters of Stone" tracks Steven's journey of discovery about the lives and fates of the Robinski family, in Southern Africa, Berlin, Riga and Auschwitz. It also explores the worldwide rise of eugenics and racial science before the war, which justified the murder of Jews by the Nazis and caused South Africa and other countries to close their doors to Jewish refugees. Most of all, this book is a ... reconstruction of a family trapped in an increasingly terrifying and deadly Nazi state, and of the immense pressure on Steven's father, in faraway South Africa, which forced him to retreat into silence."--Back cover.