Author Description

Beautiful full-color drawings and paintings accompany each page of text in this moving memoir of life in a Polish village from the peaceful 1930s to the devastating war years and beyond. Fluek literally "pictures" her childhood in both art and words--a warm Jewish family life that included farm chores, holiday observance, and good relations with fellow villagers both Jewish and Catholic. She then describes with great restraint the devastation of her world by World War II. The individual vignettes, such as "Walking Between Bullets" and "German Prisoners of War," are devastating in the use of spare prose and detailed art. She takes the remains of her family through the Russian occupation, the horrors left by the Nazis in Poland, to a happy ending in America. A wrenchingly beautiful book, appropriate for most libraries.