From the Man Booker-nominated author of the novel Far to Go and one of our most talented young writers comes an unflinching, moving and unforgettable memoir about family secrets and the rediscovered past.
Alison Pick was born in the 1970s and raised in a loving, supportive family, but as a teenager she made a discovery that forever changed her understanding of who she was: She learned that her Pick grandparents, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia during WWII, were Jewish, and that most of this side of the family had died in concentration camps. She also discovered that her own father had not known of this history until a chance encounter in his early twenties—and then he, too, had kept the secret. Engaged to be married but in the grip of a crippling depression, Alison began to uncover her Jewish heritage, a quest which challenged all her assumptions about her faith, her future, and her family.
Alison Pick was born in the 1970s and raised in a loving, supportive family, but as a teenager she made a discovery that forever changed her understanding of who she was: She learned that her Pick grandparents, who had escaped from Czechoslovakia during WWII, were Jewish, and that most of this side of the family had died in concentration camps. She also discovered that her own father had not known of this history until a chance encounter in his early twenties—and then he, too, had kept the secret. Engaged to be married but in the grip of a crippling depression, Alison began to uncover her Jewish heritage, a quest which challenged all her assumptions about her faith, her future, and her family.