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Sixteen-year-old Thomas Wanninger is on a mission: to find out what his grandfather, a Nazi officer, did during World War II. Thomas is going to Israel to work on a kibbutz, where he will have access to a Jerusalem archive that may hold the information he seeks. His life is one of many to be affected by a terrorist attack that occurs at 11:47 A.M. on the day he arrives. Kibbutz members, a doctor, "the boss" of a diner, two Palestinian teenagers and their families, a bus driver, policemen, a news correspondent, an Israeli soldier, a Holocaust survivor . . . these and others add their voices to the minute-by-minute account of a catastrophic incident that changes everything, while at the same time renewing a deadly cycle of sacrifice and destruction.