A moving account of a mother and daughter who visit Germany to face the Holocaust tragedy that has caused their family decades of intergenerational trauma, from the author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was twelve, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details. Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and—more importantly—with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust’s lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.
"I'm reading this book right now and loving it!
Inspired by the author’s extended family and their status as Mitläufer—Germans who ‘went along’ with Nazism, reaping its benefits and later paying the consequences Inspired by the stories told by her father about his German ...
Inspired by the stories told by her father about his German childhood and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years, Motherland is a novel that attempts to reckon with the paradox of the author's ...
This book tells the story of my mother's dramatic life before, during and after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. "I wrote Motherland because I wanted to understand a story which had become a kind of family myth.
MOTHERLAND.
PRAISE FOR MOTHERLAND: A core of spiritual knowledge resides in the poems of Sally Thomas’s Motherland- knowledge that might seem strange to the poet herself, in fact, though it definitely resides in her, and radiates throughout this ...
He was like Padma Lakshmi and Justin Timberlake, one of those people whose fame eventually surpassed their famous exes'. He wasn't a bad person, but she was starting to think he was a bit of an idiot. “I saw your movie,” Rebecca said.
The writings in this collection, fiction and nonfiction, are written from the perspectives of Irish American mothers and daughters.
The Motherland is a searing saga of two American families, with unforgettable, unique characters; Evelyn, the audacious, sassy, beautiful daughter of warm-hearted, simple, funny, loving people, who doesn't want to have their kind of ...
Based on extraordinary true events, Motherland is a powerful story about love, loss, and perseverance against the odds, perfect for fans of We Were The Lucky Ones, The Light Between Oceans, and The Nightingale.