Plagued by the fate of her older sister, Pearl and her family escape their shtetl in Ukraine before it burns to the ground during a pogrom. As she adjusts to a new life in America, the Great War breaks out, and her family is cut off from her sister completely. Etta and her family are trapped in Odessa, a city devastated by war. She lives day to day in the face of poverty and disease. Battles surround her and the taxes are steep under the mean fist of changing governments. Her faith gives her the strength to survive until her perilous escape.
At the same time, Pearl blossoms into a teenager at the start of the Roaring Twenties. At fifteen, she meets Leo at a dance. Theirs is a love story that was to endure for almost seventy years, but Leo’s family put up roadblocks from the beginning. His mother’s bravery that had once saved her husband from imprisonment in Siberia was fraught with trauma and changed the course of her life forever.
The Diaries is an inspirational story of love, adventure and survival, with an unending commitment to family. This work of fiction, based on my grandmother’s stories of what they endured, reflect a small part of a vast history of immigration to this country a hundred years ago, a history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
The Diaries is now available in Paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com
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