Author: Esther Safran Foer
Genre: Non-fiction, Biography, World War II, Holocaust
Esther Safran Foer grew up in North America, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her growing up years were haunted by her parents' pasts which were ever present but never spoken of and relegated to remaining locked up secrets. The impetus to seek out a more complete understanding of her history came when Esther's mother casually mentioned that her father had had a wife and daughter who were both killed during the Holocaust. This bombshell piece of news was completely unexpected and precipitated her journey to find out more about her sister. Esther went with her son back to their family's homeland of Ukraine, where they followed the brave and devastating footsteps of her ancestors and met other survivors of that terrible time. In this enthralling tale of her search for her sister we are given the opportunity to join her as she is finally able to gain a more complete picture of her ancestors' lives and to restore her knowledge of her family tree. Most cathartic of all for Esther as well as for the reader is that she is finally able to grieve all that was so tragically lost and put to rest the burdens that she had unwittingly been carrying for decades.
