Theauthor of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection returns
with an unforgettable account of her late mother’s childhood in
Nazi-occupied Austria and the parallels she sees in present-day America.
To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker.
Eve rarely spoke about her childhood and it was difficult to imagine her
living anywhere else except Manhattan, where she could be found
attending Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera or inspecting a round
of French triple crème at Zabar’s.
In truth, Eve had endured a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied
Vienna. After her mother passed, Julie discovered a keepsake book filled
with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a
ten-year-old girl named Eva. This long-hidden memento was the first clue
to the secret pain that Julie’s mother had carried as a refugee and
immigrant, shining a light on a family that had to persevere at every
turn to escape the antisemitism and xenophobia that threatened their
survival.
Interweaving personal memoir and family history, Eva and Eve vividly
traces one woman’s search for her mother’s lost childhood while
revealing the resilience of our forebears and the sacrifices that
ordinary people are called to make during history’s darkest hours.
Julie Metz is the New York Times bestselling author of PERFECTION.
Her new release is EVA AND EVE: A SEARCH FOR MY MOTHER’S LOST CHILDHOOD
AND WHAT A WAR LEFT BEHIND. Julie is the recipient of fellowships at
MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has
written for publications including The New York Times, Dame, and Salon
and essays have appeared in THE MOMENT and THE HOUSE THAT MADE ME. She
lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.
So first, it is right up my alley and exactly the kind of subject matter I've been binging lately. Anything to do with the Holocaust, WWII, and the stories of survival from living in an environment of antisemitism and xenophobia.
I knew I would love Eva and Eve, and moreso because it is a family record of Julie Metz's mom and the stories and tragedies that she had no clue had happened, until her mother passed away and she found her keepsake book.
What transpired from those numerous pages, were accounts of her personal childhood life, living as an immigrant and a refugee, trying to survive Hitler's Nazi regime and constant attacks on the Jewish people.
10 year old Eva, just two months before the Nazi takeover of Austria
Julie had no idea that any of this had happened, her mother was never one to share much about her younger years or the life she lived back in Vienna.
As she pages through the book and reads the entries, she begins to get a better understanding of the consequences that shaped the woman her mother Eva, became.
Through a myriad of investigations, interviews and pouring her heart and soul into finding out her family history. She traveled to Vienna and visited the home where her mother Eva had lived with her parents, and also the factory that her father owned. She was lucky to come upon some people who actually had information for her.
Photos, questions being answered, a deeper look into what life was like for Jews living in in Vienna during the Annexation of Austria, and especially what life was like for her then 10 year old mother. Stuck inside a home they could not leave, separated from friends, their belongings taken by Nazis, and the constant threat of death at their door.
The third Reich passports with the American Visas, that saved their lives.
What a fantastic trip back in time, filling in blanks, exposing us to cities we have never traveled to, and bringing together the story of yet one more Jewish family who was torn apart by the atrocities and horrors of Nazi Germany.
If you love reading about World War II and specifically the Holocaust and what happened to so many innocent people, this book is a must for your home library. It is going right on my shelf with Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and many others pertaining to this subject.
Check out the book trailer below:
Thank you to TLC Book Tours, Atria Books and Julie Metz, for this fantastic review copy.
1 comment:
I love nonfiction books like this, I can't wait to read it. Thank you for being on this tour! Sara @ TLC Book Tours
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