A stimulating analysis of the society and economy in the slave south.
#2368842 in Books 2016-10-20Original language:English 9.00 x 1.10 x 6.00l; .0 #File Name: 0817319255248 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Scholarship as literature; history as family memoirBy ambaThis book richly and precisely evokes both the ambiance of a lost world (cultured; affluent; precarious German Jewish Berlin as Hitler darkened its skies) and the quirks and yearnings of a particular family -- the author's own -- rendered with an exquisite balance of perspective and wry affection. The author's parents; law students in flight from a Germany that had ruled them nonpersons; nonetheless brought the literacy; musicality; and idealism of the German Enlightenment and Romanticism to the unlikely setting of Salt Lake City. While their survival; adaptation; and contribution to their new world were triumphant; their loss of the old world remained haunting; and haunted by "a sense of not quite belonging" that reverberated down the generations. The archetypal story of immigration is made sharply particular by the intimate evocation of an otherwise little-documented culture and era.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. I could not put it down.By Her KindThis book is about one family's journey away from certain death in Germany to new life in the US. But it is also about the thousands of families that tried to escape Nazi Germany and the ones they left behind. It is harrowing and amusing without ever lapsing into the sentimental. Bodenheimer reminds us again and again that human beings navigate the most difficult waters together and apart. She shows how our stories inevitably intermingle to include all the comfort we intend and the alienation that we deny. I could not put it down.
