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The Sweetness
Cover of The Sweetness
The Sweetness
A Novel
Borrow Borrow
A Foreward Reviews Indie Fab 2014 Finalist for Book of the Year
A. L. A. Sophie Brody Award 2014 nominee
Early in The Sweetness, an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their ghetto. "Something sour to remind me of the sweetness," she tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge. Brooklyn-born Mira Kane is the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer of women's knitwear in New York. Her cousin, eight-year-old Rosha Kaninsky, is the lone survivor of a family in Vilna exterminated by the invading Nazis. But unbeknownst to her American relatives, Rosha did not perish. Desperate to save his only child during a round-up of their ghetto, her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who then hides her in a root cellar─putting her own family at risk. The headstrong and talented Mira, who dreams of escaping Brooklyn for a career as a fashion designer, finds her ambitions abruptly thwarted when, traumatized at the fate of his European relatives, her father becomes intent on safeguarding his loved ones from threats of a brutal world, and all the family must challenge his unuttered but injurious survivor guilt. Though the American Kanes endure the experience of the Jews who got out, they reveal how even in the safety of our lives, we are profoundly affected by the dire circumstances of others.
A Foreward Reviews Indie Fab 2014 Finalist for Book of the Year
A. L. A. Sophie Brody Award 2014 nominee
Early in The Sweetness, an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their ghetto. "Something sour to remind me of the sweetness," she tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge. Brooklyn-born Mira Kane is the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer of women's knitwear in New York. Her cousin, eight-year-old Rosha Kaninsky, is the lone survivor of a family in Vilna exterminated by the invading Nazis. But unbeknownst to her American relatives, Rosha did not perish. Desperate to save his only child during a round-up of their ghetto, her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker, who then hides her in a root cellar─putting her own family at risk. The headstrong and talented Mira, who dreams of escaping Brooklyn for a career as a fashion designer, finds her ambitions abruptly thwarted when, traumatized at the fate of his European relatives, her father becomes intent on safeguarding his loved ones from threats of a brutal world, and all the family must challenge his unuttered but injurious survivor guilt. Though the American Kanes endure the experience of the Jews who got out, they reveal how even in the safety of our lives, we are profoundly affected by the dire circumstances of others.
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About the Author-
  • For as long as she can remember, libraries have been Sande Boritz Berger's safe haven and books her greatest joy. After two decades as a scriptwriter and video producer for Fortune 500 companies, Sande returned to her other passion: writing fiction and nonfiction full-time. She completed an MFA in writing and literature at Stony Brook Southampton College, where she was awarded the Deborah Hecht Memorial prize for fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Epiphany, Tri-Quarterly, Confrontation, and The Southampton Review, as well as several anthologies, including Aunties: Thirty-Five Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother (Ballantine) and Ophelia's Mom: Women Speak Out About Loving and Letting Go of Their Adolescent Daughters (Crown). She has written for the Huffington Post, Salon, and Psychology Today. Her debut novel, The Sweetness, was a Foreword Reviews IndieFab finalist for Book of the Year and was nominated for the Sophie Brody award from the ALA. Berger and her husband live in NYC and often escape to the quiet of Bridgehampton
Reviews-
  • Kirkus

    August 15, 2014
    A Jewish girl in Eastern Europe and her teenage American cousin experience the Holocaust years in vastly different ways in this bittersweet novel. Debut novelist Berger found her inspiration in stories she overheard as a child, as she writes in her acknowledgements. She treats her material with delicacy and occasional awkwardness. The book begins with an account by 8-year-old Rosha in 1941 of her life in the Jewish ghetto of Vilna as her family prepares for the Sabbath and awaits the arrival of her father, who shows up late with a six-pointed yellow star and the word JUDE newly displayed on his sleeve. The next chapter, set in the same year but in Brooklyn, is far more lighthearted, as it introduces Mira, an 18-year-old fashion-design student who's trying to sneak out of her traditional home wearing dramatic makeup in emulation of the movie stars she adores. The story continues in a series of short chapters told from different viewpoints, though only Rosha's tale, which turns out to be about being hidden in a basement by a Catholic Polish woman, is in the first person. The extended Brooklyn family is deeply affected by the grim news they receive about their Vilna relations, all of whom they believe to be dead. Berger has created compelling characters, including Mira's autocratic father and her two maiden aunts, and is especially insightful about the complications of family ties during stressful times. But the book sometimes seems strained as it tries to balance a host of larger issues, like gender roles during and after World War II, with more intimate details. Tenses and prepositions get tangled sometimes, as in this description of how Mira's beau interacts with her family: "Nathan listened to all sides of the story and acted like a natural mediator, when indeed he was to become the family's buffer." A tender look at immigrants in America and Nazi victims in Europe succeeds in educating and engaging readers.

    COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Library Journal

    July 1, 2014

    The Kanes of Brooklyn lead an exceptionally comfortable life owing to the financial success of Charlie Kane's clothing manufacturing business. While Charlie, along with a brother and two sisters, emigrated from Riga, Latvia, his parents and another brother remained in Vilna. Now, as the Nazis move into Lithuania, there is suddenly no news from the family. When Charlie learns of the massacre of the Jews in Vilna, he becomes overly protective of his American family, forcing his talented daughter, Mira, to work for him instead of finishing design school. What Charlie doesn't know is that his niece, Rosha, is alive in Vilna; she was handed to a Catholic candlemaker as her family was being marched to their execution. As Berger's novel moves back and forth from Vilna to Brooklyn, the focus is on Rosha and Mira as well as on Charlie's sister Jeanette. All three attempt to make sense of a life that often makes no sense at all. VERDICT In this engaging debut, a semifinalist for Amazon's annual Breakthrough Novel Award, readers gain three different views of the effects of World War II on ordinary people.--Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS

    Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Booklist

    August 1, 2014
    Despite the title, bitterness is the dark driving force in this stirring debut novel of Holocaust survivor guiltguilt about being safe. Told with candor and tenderness, there are two parallel stories of Jewish girlsone a teen, one an eight year old from the same family but worlds apart during WWII. Mira in Brooklyn is into fashion design, and she causes uproar in her wealthy family when she elopes before her boyfriend is sent to boot camp. She does hear about the transports and camps in Europe, but she tries to block it out. Her father feels guilty about his brother's family, who refused to leave Vilna. Meanwhile, in Vilna, his brother's daughter, Rosha, survives, hidden in a root cellar by a Polish woman. There are flashpoint memories of heroism and surprise to the very end. With the truth about the horror, the rescuer and survival detail is heartbreaking and unforgettable, the big history told through searing detail, as when Rosha's caretaker back in Vilna is told to shoot a mother and son but shoots himself. Mira's baby is named for Rosha, believed dead, but when she arrives in Brooklyn, the word godsend provides an intense connection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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