A subtle meditation on sex and politics in pre-statehood Israel, this slim novel expands on the legend that a young Golda Meir had an affair with Albert Pharaon, the heir to a Palestinian fortune. Albert is sophisticated and elegant, but his social circle's mercenary hypocrisy drives him to leave his family in Beirut for a solitary life in Haifa. Golda Myerson, meanwhile, is a young Russian Jewish woman who arrives in Israel by way of Milwaukee and...