A newspaper clipping from my hometown in Germany ultimately inspired my novel, "Irretrievably Broken." A neighboring property had been torn down and a mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath, was unearthed. Experts speculated that a synagogue was most likely situated beneath the foundations of the house in which I had lived as a child. I read the clipping and promptly forgot about it. Or so I thought. But this discovery must have been burned into my subconscious. I was already more than half-way through my novel when I re-discovered the clipping more...