Eve Wald­man, an Amer­i­can archivist on a fel­low­ship in Scot­land, is explor­ing the hills near Loch Lomond when a sud­den storm hits. She finds shel­ter in a cave, but also finds a trove of long-buried let­ters writ­ten by two Jew­ish lovers. Her cave dis­cov­ery opens secrets that will impact fam­i­lies, rela­tion­ships, and elu­ci­date social and his­tor­i­cal norms.

The nov­el unfolds over two-years and fea­tures four alter­nat­ing nar­ra­tors: Eve; her father, Sam; Mac Mon­tei­th; and his moth­er, Mar­garet. Golod­ner skill­ful­ly intro­duces them and threads their lives and back­ground sto­ries togeth­er. Eve, an out­spo­ken, inde­pen­dent young woman, is seri­ous­ly ded­i­cat­ed to her career. She’s been lov­ing­ly raised by her sin­gle father, but is always aware of his secrets and con­scious of the pair’s lack of any extend­ed fam­i­ly. Sam, brought up in an ultra-Ortho­dox fam­i­ly, knew he was gay at an ear­ly age. He is forced to mar­ry and adhere to the community’s strict rit­u­als. When his wife dies sud­den­ly, he escapes and suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing a new sec­u­lar life for him­self and his young daugh­ter. Mac Mon­tei­th is born into Scot­tish aris­toc­ra­cy, but prefers to run a pub on the family’s estate, eschew­ing his enti­tled lifestyle. Though not to the manor born, Mar­garet is deter­mined to pre­serve the Mon­tei­th fam­i­ly her­itage and lega­cy for her chil­dren. She goes to great and ques­tion­able lengths to achieve her pur­pose. As Eve and Mac begin a seri­ous rela­tion­ship and Sam and Mar­garet con­tem­plate their choic­es, secrets, and judge­ments, all the main char­ac­ters ques­tion and explore their iden­ti­ties and fates.

Cen­tral to all these indi­vid­u­als’ lives are the two peo­ple who wrote the secret love let­ters. Shi­ra Lev­en­son Macalaster (b.1842) was born into the wealth­i­est Jew­ish fam­i­ly in Eng­land. They backed the Crown, but were forced from the court due to anti­semitism. Shi­ra goes on to mar­ry an aris­to­crat­ic Scots­man, Hugh Macalaster, Earl of Mon­tei­th, with his own sex­u­al secrets. He per­mits Shi­ra to prac­tice her Judaism sur­rep­ti­tious­ly. The Lev­en­son Foun­da­tion funds Scotland’s first Jew­ish doc­tor, Ben­jamin Belz­er, in his work with poor Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties. Scot­land allowed Jews to attend uni­ver­si­ty at a time when Eng­land did not. 

Shi­ra and Ben­jamin engage in a pas­sion­ate affair and at least one of her chil­dren is fathered by Ben­jamin. When he is lost at sea on a mis­sion, Shi­ra grieves for him for the rest of her life. Macalaster lat­er becomes the British PM. The his­tor­i­cal scan­dalous impli­ca­tions of the affair beset Eve, Mac, and their families.

While Eve dogged­ly pur­sues the sce­nario of the let­ters, she strug­gles to keep her work and her love for Mac sep­a­rate. Will her jour­ney of pro­fes­sion­al self-dis­cov­ery come at a per­son­al price?

The author’s descrip­tive imagery beau­ti­ful­ly evokes life in the Scot­tish High­lands as well as the open­ness of the col­lege town of Ann Arbor, Michi­gan. Scot­tish his­to­ry, cul­ture, and mores are authen­ti­cal­ly por­trayed. The inter­est­ing and intri­cate work of archivists is clear­ly detailed and informative. 

This engag­ing, high­ly read­able, and reflec­tive nar­ra­tive of mod­ern and past romance and mys­tery cov­ers many time­ly themes, includ­ing homo­pho­bia, anti­semitism, for­bid­den love, par­ent-child rela­tion­ships, and life choic­es. There are also some enter­tain­ing plot ele­ments of mys­ti­cal real­ism in the mix. 

The well-drawn char­ac­ters of Cave of Secrets strive to live gen­uine lives with­in soci­ety and come to terms with their roots and identities.