The year is 1896, and Elisabeth ('Lisi') von Schwabacher, the gifted daughter of a Jewish banker, returns home to Berlin from three years of piano study in Vienna. Though her thoughts are far from matrimony, she is pursued by two noblemen impressed as much by her stunning wealth as by her prodigious intellect and musical talent. Awakened to sudden improvements in the opportunities open to women, Lisi balks at her mother's expectation that she will contract a brilliant marriage and settle down to a life as a wife and mother. In a bid to emancipate herself once and for all from that unwelcome fate, she resolves to have an affair with one of her aristocratic suitors -- an escapade that, given her rigid social milieu, has tragic consequences.All Things That Deserve to Perish is a novel that penetrates the constrained condition of women in Wilhelmine Germany, as well as the particular social challenges faced by German Jews, who suffered invidious discrimination long before Hitler's seizure of power. It is also a compassionate rumination on the distractions of sexual love, and the unbearable strains of a life devoted to art. ...Mack's elegant prose summons the era by evoking the literature of the time period. ...Lisi is a character worthy of Edith Wharton, compellingly driven and finely flawed. ...The supporting characters are also drawn in enticing detail, transcending the archetypal roles they fill... Mack succeeds in delivering the two primary expectations of this sort of novel: Readers will be thoroughly immersed in the time period and fully invested in the fate of its hero. ...A rich tale set in the underexplored Wilhelmine Germany. - Kirkus Reviews [A} vivid and incisive historical novel set in Germany and Austria in the 1890s. ...Mack's prose often soars, and her scenes and letters pulse with witty remarks and jolts of hard truth. Readers invested in the milieu or in historical domestic tragedy will find much to relish. - Publishers Weekly Booklife "Well researched and incredibly well written.. .All Things That Deserve To Perish is the kind of intellectual delicacy that causes the reader to become torn between savoring or devouring its pages. Dana Mack is an artist... *****" - Reedsy Discovery "Expertly written.. Anyone who loves a good classic from the Victorian era is bound to enjoy reading this modern book with a similar feel." - US Review of Books . I loved the overall historical sweep of this novel, and the home life of Lisi and her parents. There are flashes of insight into the life of the Junkers, the aristocrats who controlled German high society, and the central love story with its cruel misunderstandings kept me turning the pages. Historical Novel Society Dana Mack is a musician, historian, and writer living in Connecticut.