Where She Came from: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History - Hardcover

Epstein, Helen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316246085 ISBN 13: 9780316246088

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1997

Synopsis

A journalist searches for her mother's historical roots after her death--from the nineteenth century, to the holocaust, and beyond

About this title

Review:

Along with millions of lives, the Holocaust stripped away the official records and family mementos that anchor personal histories. In 1989, after both the opening of Czechoslovakia to the outside world and the death of her mother Frances, a concentration-camp survivor, journalist Helen Epstein made her first tentative efforts to uncover her own history. Armed only with a 12-page letter written by her mother, she retraced family footsteps from the provincial town of Brtnice to Vienna, where her great-grandmother Josephine had killed herself in despair. In Prague, her spirited grandmother Pepi, who had been orphaned at age 8 and left in poverty, rose from those ashes to run a fashionable dressmaking salon. Pepi married a man who repudiated Judaism so completely that their daughter Frances learned of her background only as the Nazis rose to power. Epstein's meticulous research beautifully conjures the drama of their lives and times, carving out the surrounding culture until these three women stand against it in stark relief.

About the Author:

Helen Epstein is an affiliate of Harvard University's Center for European Studies.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0316246085
• ISBN 13: 9780316246088
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322