The novel is split into two sections: Book I and Book II.
Book I
Jakob Beer is a 7-year-old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, burying himself up to the neck in the soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos Roussos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela's help he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family.
Book II
The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob's poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob's journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob's past.
Main characters
Jakob Beer—The only survivor of his town who is found and rescued by Athos. He is an intelligent boy who later becomes a renowned poet.
Athos Roussos—A geologist who rescues Jakob and becomes his guardian. He teaches Jakob about the beauty of science and also the world.
Ben—An admirer of Jakob and his poetry. He travels to Greece to find Jakob's journals.
Theme, style and structure
Fugitive Pieces contains themes of trauma, grief, loss, and memory, primarily in relation to the Holocaust, which Michaels explores via metaphors such as nature. The work is told in a poetic style, which has caused some critics to view it as an elegy, and others, such as Donna Coffey, to feel that it re-imagines the literary telling of the Holocaust and also of nature. The story is told through two narratives, in the first part, Jakob's, then in the second part, Ben's, which are connected through one main event that had an effect on both narrators. John Mullan has stated that he feels that the book shows how the Holocaust and traumatic moments can impact generations of survivors and their family members. Fugitive Pieces also contains mentions of the senses, which are shown through an emphasis of Jakob hearing what happened to his family, rather than seeing the event take place, which in turns adds to his trauma and his inability to gain closure. Similarly, Ben has only heard stories but never had first hand experience. Michaels uses this to convey a paradox between what we hear, the language, and then the silence that follows due to the suffering and trauma of others. The title of the novel is taken from Fugitive Pieces, Lord Byron's first volume of verse, privately printed in the autumn of 1806.
