From the Man Booker-nominated author comes an unflinching memoir about family secrets and rediscovered pasts. Raised in a loving family during the 1970s, Alison Pick enjoyed a happy childhood until a teenage discovery shattered her understanding of her heritage. She learned that her grandparents, who escaped from the Czech Republic during WWII, were Jewish and that most of this side of the family perished in concentration camps. This revelation was compounded by the fact that her father had also been unaware of this history until a chance encounter in his twenties, after which he kept the secret from Alison and her sister. In her early thirties, while engaged but battling crippling depression, Alison began to explore her Jewish roots. She realized that reclaiming her identity was essential for her future. However, a significant challenge remained: her mother wasn't Jewish, which meant Alison technically wasn't either. In this raw yet sublime memoir, Alison shares her struggle with faith, her journey to convert to Judaism, and her efforts to confront her past while embracing the future, including starting her own family. Her story is told in crystalline prose, blending the nuance and drama of a novel with profound insights into the lives of those lost and the hope for future generations.
Alison Pick Book order (chronological)
Alison Pick is the author of a novel that was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and won the Canadian Jewish Book Award. Her work, met with international acclaim, is frequently featured on best-of lists. Pick focuses on profound human relationships and the complexities of identity, with prose that is both urgent and poetic. As a respected educator, she inspires emerging writers with her insights into the craft of storytelling.
The Man Booker Prize finalist Far to Go by acclaimed author Alison Pick is historical fiction at its very best. When Czechoslovakia relinquishes the Sudetenland to Hitler, the powerful influence of Nazi propaganda sweeps through towns and villages like a sinister vanguard of the Reich's advancing army. A fiercely patriotic secular Jew, Pavel Bauer is helpless to prevent his world from unraveling as first his government, then his business partners, then his neighbors turn their back on his affluent, once-beloved family. Only the Bauers' adoring governess, Marta, sticks by Pavel, his wife, Anneliese, and their little son, Pepik, bound by her deep affection for her employers and friends. But when Marta learns of their impending betrayal at the hands of her lover, Ernst, Pavel's best friend, she is paralyzed by her own fear of discovery—even as the endangered family for whom she cares so deeply struggles with the most difficult decision of their lives. Interwoven with a present-day narrative that gradually reveals the fate of the Bauer family during and after the war, Far to Go is a riveting family epic, love story, and psychological drama.