"The Porcelain Monkey" is about a woman, a Jewish convert, whose adored father was a concentration camp guard.

She quailed at his heartless words, afraid of discovering that her adored father had feet of clay but determined to face the truth.

Slowly she reveals that her adored father was sometimes abusive.

Theo is trying unsuccessfully to comfort her daughter, Bessie, and to assure the young woman that her adored father will survive his accident.

And very early, she learned that even her adored father was part of this malevolence.

Julia was devastated by the death of her adored father.

So little about her past, her adored father, the mother of whom she never spoke.

Countering it was not what she had been trained for by her mentors, chiefly her adored father, Albert.

How does a nice middle-class teen-ager deal with the fact that her adored father is a thief and a killer?