"A memoir that takes us through many worlds, through heartache and noble hopes, through the mysteries of family love . . . Read Bending Toward the Sun and enrich your life."—Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters
A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery, Bending Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in the wake of brutal terror.
Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland to hide from the Nazis in a cramped, dark attic with fourteen members of her family. Young Rita watched her younger brother and her mother die before er eyes. But the tragedy of the Holocaust was only the beginning of Rita's story.
Decades later, Rita's daughter Leslie began probing the traumatic events of her mother's childhood to discover how Rita's pain has affected not only Leslie's life and outlook but that of her own daughter, Mikaela, as well. The result is Bending Toward the Sun, a collaboration between mother and daughter that brings together the stories of three generations of a family to understand the legacy that unites, inspires, and haunts them all.
"[An] affecting memoir. . . . Vivid. . . . Riveting. . . . An amazing story of wartime survival."—Kirkus Reviews
"A memoir that takes us through many worlds, through heartache and noble hopes, through the mysteries of family love . . . Read Bending Toward the Sun and enrich your life."—Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters
A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery, Bending Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in the wake of brutal terror.
Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland to hide from the Nazis in a cramped, dark attic with fourteen members of her family. Young Rita watched her younger brother and her mother die before er eyes. But the tragedy of the Holocaust was only the beginning of Rita's story.
Decades later, Rita's daughter Leslie began probing the traumatic events of her mother's childhood to discover how Rita's pain has affected not only Leslie's life and outlook but that of her own daughter, Mikaela, as well. The result is Bending Toward the Sun, a collaboration between mother and daughter that brings together the stories of three generations of a family to understand the legacy that unites, inspires, and haunts them all.
"[An] affecting memoir. . . . Vivid. . . . Riveting. . . . An amazing story of wartime survival."—Kirkus Reviews
Reviews-
-
June 15, 2009
The lasting impact of the Holocaust on a survivor and her daughter emerges in this joint account by Lurie-Gilbert and her mother. Lurie was five when a farmer agreed to hide her along with 14 Polish-Jewish relatives in his attic in exchange for jewelry and furs. While in hiding, Lurie witnessed the Nazis shoot a cousin and an uncle; her younger brother and mother died in the stifling, stinking hideout (years later her daughter, Gilbert-Lurie, wonders if the boy was smothered to quiet him and if her grandmother died of a broken heart). After the war, in an Italian DP camp, Lurie's father remarried to a stepmother Lurie resented; her father became increasingly depressed and remote when their fractured and traumatized family relocated to Chicago; and deep depressions haunted Lurie's own otherwise happy marriage. Gilbert-Lurie in turn recalls her mother's overprotectiveness, her career as a TV executive, a 1988 visit to her mother's childhood village and her own guilt, anxiety and sadness. Although the voices and experiences expressed are valuable, the writing is adequate at best, with none of the luminosity of Anne Frank, to whom Gilbert-Lurie compares her mother. Photos. -
Arianna Huffington, author, syndicated columnist, and founder of The Huffington Post
"A captivating memoir that explores a complicated, loving, and enduring mother-daughter bond, and reveals how doubts, hopes, and dreams are handed down from generation to generation. As both a mother and a daughter, I found it deeply touching." — Arianna Huffington, author, syndicated columnist, and founder of The Huffington Post
"Here is a memoir that takes us through many worlds, through heartache and noble hopes, through the mysteries of family love and toward a beautiful, light filled conclusion. Read Bending Toward the Sun and enrich your life." — Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters and Making Loss Matter-Creating Meaning in Difficult Times
"Gripping, exhausting, exciting, devastating—this book is at times hard to read but always impossible to put down. " — Rabbi Irving Greenberg, Founding President, Jewish Life Network; former Chairman of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
"BENDING TOWARD THE SUN is . . . bolstered by writing that is compelling and sensitive, the book transcends the holocaust genre with its multi-generational point of view on the ultimate effect of fear and evil on young minds." — Dick Wolf, Emmy Award-winning creator and Executive Producer of Law and Order; Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; and Law and Order: Criminal Intent
"[An] affecting memoir. . . . Vivid. . . . Riveting. . . . An amazing story of wartime survival." — Kirkus Reviews
"The lasting impact of the Holocaust on a survivor and her daughter emerges in this joint account. . . . The voices and experiences expressed are valuable." — Publishers Weekly
