Keeping Secrets
A Novel
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
For fans of All the Light You Cannot See and The German Girl, Keeping Secrets is a remarkable debut, by a veteran American magazine journalist exploring her own family's flight from Poland.
Hannah Stone, now a successful New York City journalist, was smuggled out of Poland as a child with her parents after surviving the Holocaust. They remade themselves in America, harboring the deep scars of stories never told. Now in her thirties, Hannah learns a family secret that sends her back to where she came from, on the investigative journey of her life.
Replayed in cinematic flashbacks, of the family’s immigrant experience and war years on the run, alternating with the contemporary family drama in the U.S. and Communist Poland, Keeping Secrets hinges on the mystery of a sister who was left behind.
In this sweeping, suspenseful debut, Keeping Secrets reveals the agonizing choices World War II thrust upon so many, examining the enormous price of guilt and the very heart of identity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bernard debuts with a formulaic postwar family drama. In 1976, Hannah Stein lives in New York City and writes celebrity profiles for Weekend magazine. A series of awkwardly shuffled flashbacks lay out the Steins' path from Poland during WWII, when Hannah's father, Hershel, successfully passed himself off as a gentile, in the process saving Hannah and her mother, Molly, from the Nazis. After the war, the trio immigrated to the U.S. as the Stone family. Now, Hershel's declining health leads to a medical crisis, during which Hannah learns she'd had a sister who was separated from the family. The reveal comes as Hannah's marriage is strained by her infertility, leading her to return to Poland to track down her secret sibling. The results of her search, though, are unfortunately predictable, and the lack of suspense is exacerbated by factual errors (such as Harry Truman being "reelected" as president). This has all been done before, to better effect.
