Motherland and Other Stories PDF Download

Author: Wandeka Gayle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781845234799
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Scott K. Andrews
Publisher: Abaddon Books
ISBN: 1849970157
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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"I celebrated my sixteenth birthday by crashing a plane, fighting for my life and facing execution, again." Lee Keegan travels to Iraq on the trail of his missing father, only to find himself caught between desperate rebels and a general who wants to strap him into an electric chair. In England, Jane Crowther, one time matron of St Mark's School for Boys, attracts the wrong kind of attention and has to fight to protect her new school from unlikely enemies. And in a bunker underneath Washington, a madman issues orders that will tip two devastated countries into total war.

Author: Elissa Altman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0399181601
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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“I’m reading this book right now and loving it!”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy? “Vibrating with emotion, this deeply honest account strikes a chord.”—People “A wry and moving meditation on aging and the different kinds of love between women.”—O: The Oprah Magazine After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter. Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship. Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again. Praise for Motherland “Rarely has a mother-daughter relationship been excavated with such honesty. Elissa Altman is a beautiful, big-hearted writer who mines her most central subject: her gorgeous, tempestuous, difficult mother, and the terrain of their shared life. The result is a testament to the power of love and family.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

Author: Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569479275
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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In this quiet but engaging debut novel, an American teenager spends the summer with her relatives in southern India and gains new insight into her past, her family and her heritage. Born in Kerala, Maya spent the first four years of her life there, cared for mainly by her grandmother, Ammamma, until she was sent to live with her parents in New York. At 15, with her parents' marriage undergoing a rough patch, she is sent back to India to stay with her Aunt Reema and Uncle Sanjay, their 10-year-old daughter, Brindha, and Ammamma at their house in the tea hills above Coimbatore. It's been years since Maya came to visit, and this time she is keenly aware of cultural differences: the different spheres of men and women and the persistence of the caste system. She feels stifled by the attentions of Ammamma and resentful of the time she must spend with the old woman. When Maya suffers an accident while most of the family is away, she and Ammamma grow closer, and Maya learns a hidden family fact. But only when Ammamma falls ill and the entire family gathers, including Maya's parents from New York, does Maya begin to comprehend more deeply the complexities of relationships.

Author: Rita Goldberg
Publisher: Halban
ISBN: 1905559690
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Like Anne Frank, Hilde Jacobsthal was born in Germany and brought up in Amsterdam, where the two families became close. Unlike Anne Frank, she survived the war, and Otto Frank was to become godfather to Rita, her first daughter. "I am the child of a woman who survived the Holocaust not by the skin of her teeth but heroically. This book tells the story of my mother's dramatic life before, during and after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. "I wrote Motherland because I wanted to understand a story which had become a kind of family myth. My mother's life could be seen as a narrative of the twentieth century; along with my father she was present and active at many of its significant moments." Rita Goldberg Hilde Jacobsthal was fifteen when the Nazis invaded Holland. After the arrest of her parents in 1943 she fled to Belgium, where she went into hiding and worked with the Resistance at night. She was liberated by the American army in 1944. In April 1945 she volunteered with a British Red Cross Unit to go to the relief of Bergen-Belsen, which had itself been liberated one week before her arrival. The horror and devastation were overwhelming, but despite her shock and grief she stayed at the camp for two years, helping with the enormous task of recovery. Sorrow and exuberance went hand in hand as the young people at Belsen found renewed life and each other. Hilde got to know Hanns Alexander (subject of the recently published Hanns and Rudolf), who was on the British War Crimes Commission, and, eventually, a Swiss doctor called Max Goldberg. Motherland is the culmination of a lifetime of reflection and a decade of research. Rita Goldberg enlarges the story she heard from her mother with historical background. She has talked with her about the minutest details of her life and pored over her papers, exploring not only her mother's life but her own. Complicated feelings are explored lightly as Rita takes the story beyond Bergen-Belsen, where paradoxically her parents met and fell in love; beyond Israel's War of Independence where they both volunteered, and on to the next chapter of their lives in the US. A deeply moving story, Motherland will become an essential text about World War II, the Holocaust and the survival of the spirit.

Author: Fern Schumer Chapman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140286236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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A moving account of a mother and daughter who visit Germany to face the Holocaust tragedy that has caused their family decades of intergenerational trauma, from the author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was twelve, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details. Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and—more importantly—with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust’s lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.

Author: Maria Hummel
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619023547
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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This “haunting” family saga set in WWII Germany “illuminates the reality of war away from the frontlines . . . with a compassion and depth of understanding that will touch your heart” (People). Inspired by the author’s extended family and their status as Mitläufer—Germans who ‘went along’ with Nazism, reaping its benefits and later paying the consequences Inspired by the stories told by her father about his German childhood and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years, Motherland is a novel that attempts to reckon with the paradox of the author's father—a product of her grandparents’ fiercely protective love—and their status as passive Nazi–sympathizers known as Mitläufer. At the center of Motherland lies the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth. Two months later, just before being drafted into medical military service, Frank marries a young woman charged with looking after the surviving baby and his two grieving sons. Alone in the house, Liesl attempts to keep the children fed with dwindling food supplies, safe from the constant Allied air attacks and the tides of desperate refugees flooding their town. When one child begins to mentally unravel, Liesl must discover the source of the boy’s infirmity or lose him forever to Hadamar, the infamous hospital for “unfit” children. Bearing witness to the shame and courage of Third Reich families during the devastating final days of the war, each family member’s fateful choice leads the reader deeper into questions of complicity and innocence, and to the novel’s heartbreaking and unforgettable conclusion.

Author: Ranabir Sen
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1637147090
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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August 1945. The Japanese onslaught on Vietnam and Philippines came to an end. Netaji Subhash Bose's sudden death was a big blow for the Indian diaspora in South East Asia, who were backing him for their motherland's freedom. Many of them remained in South East Asian countries instead of moving back to India. Two of these countries were Vietnam and the Philippines. The book is a tearful story about the Indian migrants who are still risking everything in their pursuit for a better life. Crossing boundaries and breaking barriers with every generation, their fates are tied to their adopted country’s economic and political merry go around. After 75 years, they still ask, where do we belong? You may find an answer in this book.

Author: Tetyana Denford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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'The wheels of the cart thrummed along the ground, a black silhouette moving across the slate skies, the figure of Julia's sister cut out in black, holding the reigns. They were now hours away from what they had left behind...' Ukraine, 1940. Julia flees her childhood home, never to see her parents again. She is captured and forced into a labour camp in Germany, where she slowly starts to give up on all hope of survival. Her redemption comes in the form of Henry, a fellow Ukrainian working for the SS. Julia and Henry promise themselves to each other, and the days pass with little hope, but just before liberation, they welcome a daughter into the world and decide to board a boat filled with thousands of immigrants heading to Australia. Salvation. They begin again, trying to make sense of their life in the barren sugarcane fields. But Julia feels isolated and frustrated, and tensions slowly mount between her and Henry, until one day, Julia is forced to reveal a tragic secret; a secret that she'd never revealed for fear of losing him, and their daughter. It breaks Henry's heart and shatters his trust, and so he gives her an ultimatum before they immigrate to New York. It's a choice no mother should ever have to make. Her decision changes the course of her life forever, until 65 years later, the forgiveness she seeks comes from someone she never thought would find her again. Based on extraordinary true events, Motherland is a powerful story about love, loss, and perseverance against the odds, perfect for fans of We Were The Lucky Ones, The Light Between Oceans, and The Nightingale.

Author: Amy Sohn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439165688
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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With her trademark blend of “social satire, interpersonal drama, and urban glamour” (The New York Times), Amy Sohn delivers a candid, unsentimental look at modern marriage. In her acclaimed novels, Amy Sohn has beguiled us with her pinpoint observations of how we live and love, giving voice to our innermost thoughts and everyday anxieties. Now, in Motherland, her most diverting book to date, she introduces us to five mothers and fathers in Cape Cod, Park Slope, and Greenwich Village who find themselves adrift professionally and personally. Rebecca Rose, whose husband has been acting aloof, is tempted by the attentions of a former celebrity f lame; Marco Goldstein, saddled with two kids when his husband, Todd, is away on business, turns to anonymous sex for comfort; Danny Gottlieb, a screenwriter on the cusp of a big break, leaves his wife and children to pitch a film (and meet young women) in Los Angeles; fallen sanctimommy Karen Bryan Shapiro, devastated by her husband’s infidelity and abandonment, attempts a fresh start with a hot single dad; and former A-list actress Melora Leigh plots a star turn on Broadway to revive her Hollywood career. As their stories intersect in surprising ways and their deceptions spiral out of control, they begin to question their beliefs about family, happiness, and themselves. Equal parts moving and richly entertaining, Motherland is a fresh take on modern marriage that confirms Amy Sohn as one of our most insightful commentators on relationships and parenting in America today.