Motherland

"In 1938, just before they were killed by the Nazis, Frieda and Siegmund Westerfeld sent their twelve-year-old daughter, Edith, to live with relatives in America. Edith escaped the death camps but was left profoundly adrift, cut off from the culture of her homeland, its traditions - her entire identity. For decades she shut away her memories, unable even to sing a German lullaby to her children, until she realized that the void of tbe past was consuming her and her family. Then, with her daughter Fern Schumer Chapman - herself a pregnant mother - Edith returned to Germany." "For Edith the trip was an act of courage, a chance to reconnect with her homeland and reconcile with her past. For Fern the trip was a miraculous opening, a break in the wall of silence surrounding her mother's history...and her mother."--BOOK JACKET.