In this unforgettable and "essential feminist memoir of women's lives" (Sarah Wildman, author of Paper Love) the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection unearths her mother's hidden past in in Nazi-occupied Austria.
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.
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 from Nazi-occupied Vienna, shining a light on "a story of political repression, terror, and dissolution...full of astonishing and unlikely twists of fate showing again that individual destiny may be the greatest mystery of all" (Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance).
"A gripping and intimate wartime account with piercing contemporary relevance" (Kirkus Reviews), Eva and Eve lyrically 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.
Autorentext
Julie Metz
Klappentext
The author of the "poignant, powerful, and absolutely riveting" (Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author) memoir Perfection returns with an unforgettable and vividly written account of her late mother's lost childhood in Nazi-occupied Austria and the parallels she sees between that dark time and present-day America.
To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except the Upper West Side of 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, though she rarely spoke about it. Yet after her passing, Julie discovered a keepsake box filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva—her mother. This was the first clue to the secret pain that Julie's mother had carried as an immigrant, and it shed light on a family that had to rely on its own perseverance to escape the xenophobia that threatened their survival.
A beautiful blend of personal memoir and family history, Eva and Eve shows how one woman's search for her mother's lost childhood offers valuable lessons about the sacrifices people make to save their families during some of the darkest times in history.