Pogroms and the Holocaust, xenophobia and the Bush War provide the backdrop for Illuminating Love. The novel entwines the journeys of two Jewish women, Judith, an immigrant to South Africa, forced to leave her home and family in Eastern Europe before World War II, and Cally her granddaughter living in contemporary South Africa. While rendering Judith's poems in calligraphy, Cally uncovers her family's history and roots in the shtetls of Lithuania and she memorialises this past. Judith's love poems also serve as a counterpoint for Cally's own circumstances. Trapped in a cycle of abuse, she also inscribes a Ketuba, the Jewish marriage contract for Aaron and Shira, as well as a love sampler for her husband Jake in order to win him back.