Showing results for "Memories" in Biographical Fiction

First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel.

Memories and Scenes: Shtetl, Childhood, Writers is the first English translation of 11 autobiographical short stories by the beloved and successful 19th century Eastern European Yiddish writer Jacob Dinezon (1852 -1919). Friend and mentor to almost every major Jewish literary figure of his day, including Sholem Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), I.L. Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, S. An-ski, and Abraham Goldfaden, Dinezon played a central role in the development of Yiddish as a modern literary language.

Coming to terms with advancing dementia, Mary has no choice other than to move into her daughter’s home. Her daughter, Kayla, caught between her cognitively impaired mother and her belligerent teenage son, soon finds caregiving is more challenging than she imagined. Sage, the family’s golden retriever, offers comfort and unconditional love, but she has her own problems, especially when it comes to dealing with Mary’s cat.