Monday, September 20, 2010

Bending Toward The Sun by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie and Rita Lurie


Bending Toward the Sun
A Mother and Daughter Memoir
By Leslie Gilbert-Lurie


A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery, Bending Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in the wake of brutal terror. Weaving together the voices of three generations of women, Leslie Gilbert-Lurie and her mother, Rita Lurie, provide powerful -- and inspiring -- evidence of the resilience of the human spirit, relevant to every culture in every corner of the world. By turns unimaginably devastating and incredibly uplifting, this firsthand account of survival and psychological healing offers a strong, poignant message of hope in our own uncertain times.

Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland to hide from the Nazis. From the summer of 1942 to mid-1944, she and fourteen members of her family shared a nearly silent existence in a cramped, dark attic, subsisting on scraps of raw food. Young Rita watched helplessly as first her younger brother then her mother died before her eyes. Motherless and stateless, Rita and her surviving family spent the next five years wandering throughout Europe, waiting for a country to accept them. The tragedy of the Holocaust was only the beginning of Rita's story.

Decades later, Rita is a mother herself, the matriarch of a close-knit family in California. Yet in addition to love, Rita unknowingly passes to her children feelings of fear, apprehension, and guilt. Her daughter Leslie, an accomplished lawyer, media executive, and philanthropist, began probing the traumatic events of her mother’s childhood to discover how Rita's pain has affected not only Leslie's life and outlook but also Leslie's daughter's, Mikaela's. A decade-long collaboration between mother and daughter, Bending Toward the Sun reveals how deeply the Holocaust remains in the hearts and minds of survivors, influencing even the lives of their descendants. It also sheds light on the generational reach of any trauma, beyond the initial victim. Drawing on interviews with the other survivors and with the Polish family who hid five-year-old Rita, Leslie and Rita bring together the stories of three generations of women -- mother, daughter, and granddaughter -- to understand the legacy that unites, inspires, and haunts them all.

Author Bio

A writer, lawyer, teacher of Holocaust Studies, child advocate, and former executive at NBC, Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is a member and past president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education, a founding member and past president of the non-profit Alliance for Children’s Rights, and a board member and co-chair of the Education Committee for the Los Angeles Music Center. She has been a recipient of the American Jewish Congress’s Tzedek Award for Outstanding Commitment to Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, and Justice, and the Alliance for Children’s Rights Child Advocate of the Year Award. This year she will be honored in Los Angeles by Facing History and Ourselves, for her work as a writer and teacher. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two teenage children.

For more information please visit http://www.bendingtowardthesun.com/

What I Can Tell You: This is a must read! I would have loved reading this book with a friend or book group.

The story of Ruchel/Rita is quite amazing and gut wrenching.  As her daughter states in the Prologue, Rita's story is very similar to Anne Frank's. Both spent two years hiding during the Holocust and hid with the help of others who would have been killed had they been found. However, Rita is here to tell about her story and pass on this legacy to her children and the generations after.

Besides it being a captivating book it is thought provoking and made me think of my own legacy and past and what I may be unconsciously handing down to my own children. Because, as Leslie mentions, our mother's past or families past, effects and shapes who we are as people.

Rita is lucky to have survived such an ordeal that changed history and is still affecting individuals.

Leslie, Rita and even Granddaughter Mikaela who has a big voice in this book are very brave to have started the journey of documenting the life and times of Ruchel/Rita. What a gripping story that will sit with me for quite some time. 

I implore you to check out the book video here.

If you decide to read this book, know that you will learn a lot about yourself and your own relationship with your mother.

What makes this book even more special is the amount of photos peppered throughout the story. Seeing the smiles and knowing the two years they endured hiding is at times unbearable.

My heart breaks for the little Ruchel who just wanted to be held and told everything was going to be OK. I cannot imagine what it was like to lose her mother the way she did. Losing my own at 12 years old to Cancer was horrific. Losing her mother right after the traumatic death of her baby brother must have been excruciating.

Reading how Leslie's life was altered by her mother's and how ultimately Mikaela's is being affected by the trauma of her families past makes me think about my own life and how my past is affecting my children in positive and negative ways and how it will trickle down into their own adult lives.

Leslie and Rita's love shines through this haunting memoir.



Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy from Harper Perennial for my honest opinion.

2 comments:

  1. Fabulous review! This is currently on my old wish list.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:54 AM

    Definitely a must read. Love your review on the book.

    ReplyDelete

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