“Jenna Blum shines a powerful light on how the past swings back and how we must face it. The Lost Family is an extraordinary read, the kind of book that makes you sob and smile, the kind that gives you hope…. It is compassionate, masterful and disturbingly contemporary.”—Tatiana de Rosnay, bestselling author of Sarah’s Key
This is high praise indeed from a very well known author! That’s what caught my eye with this one. I am a fan of Tatiana de Rosnay so seeing how much she recommended this novel made me in turn excited to read it. I am actually reviewing it next week, I made room for it in my review schedule as a matter of fact because it sounded like something that I would love.
Be on the look out for my upcoming review of this one, but in the mean time, enjoy this special feature!
The Lost Family is an amazing upcoming novel from Jenna Blum that explores themes of war, grief, family and the true love that we share. Listed as one of Oprah’s Favorite Women Writers and a New York Times Bestselling Author, Blum is a force. In The Lost Family, she crafts a beautiful ode to the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust and Nazi death camps, reminding us that life must go on despite immense pain, and that beauty still exists.
In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its Brisket Bourguignon and admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin. With his movie-star good looks and tragic past, Peter, a survivor of Auschwitz, is the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the many women who parade through the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha—the restaurant’s namesake—and two young daughters perished.
Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard. Though she is twenty years his junior, the two begin a passionate courtship. When June unexpectedly becomes pregnant, Peter proposes, hoping a new family will allow him to let go of the horror of the past. But over the next two decades, the indelible sadness of those memories will overshadow Peter, June, and their daughter Elsbeth, transforming them in shocking, heartbreaking, and unexpected ways.
Spanning three cinematic decades, from the explosive 1960s and swinging 1970s to the glittering 1980s, Jenna Blum artfully brings to the page a husband devastated by a grief he cannot name, a frustrated wife struggling to compete with a ghost she cannot banish, and a daughter sensitive to the pain of both her own family and another lost before she was born.
About the Author
New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels THOSE WHO SAVE US (Harcourt, 2004) and THE STORMCHASERS (Dutton, May 2010) and the novella “The Lucky One” in GRAND CENTRAL (Berkeley/Penguin, July 2014). One of Oprah’s Top 30 Women Writers. Novel THE LOST FAMILY forthcoming from Harper Collins JUNE 5, 2018!
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This was a book that I actually passed on initially. Yes it sounded good and like something that would be right up my alley. But my summer reading schedule always fills up so fast and I just didn’t have room for this book so basically I had to pass.
This book appealed to me for a couple of reasons, but one in particular stood out above all the other general ‘pick me’ signs that I saw in the pitch. The thing that caught my eye was the twist between historical fiction and magical realism/paranormal.
Most people know who John F Kennedy was and can probably name a fact or two about him. President. First Catholic president. Assassinated president. Democrat. Bostonian. War hero. Hyannisport yachtsman. Rich Playboy. Womanizer.
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