Once We Were Home
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
National Jewish Book Award Finalist · Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Honor Book
"This forgotten history of displaced WWII children and the return to their roots [is] captivating, thought-provoking, enlightening, and bittersweet." ―Alka Joshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist
"Rosner is one of my favorite authors." ―Lisa Scottoline, #1 bestselling author of Eternal
From the award-winning author of The Yellow Bird Sings, comes a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.
When your past is stolen, where do you belong?
Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves.
Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of quiet concealment. When a relative seeks to retrieve him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem.
Renata, a post-graduate student in archaeology, has spent her life unearthing secrets from the past--except for her own. After her mother’s death, Renata’s grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered, including why they fled Germany so quickly when Renata was a little girl.
Two decades later, they are each building lives for themselves, trying to move on from the trauma and loss that haunts them. But as their stories converge in Israel, in unexpected ways, they must each ask where and to whom they truly belong.
Beautifully evocative and tender, filled with both luminosity and anguish, Once We Were Home reveals a little-known history. Based on the true stories of children stolen during wartime, this heart-wrenching novel raises questions of complicity and responsibility, belonging and identity, good intentions and unforeseen consequences, as it confronts what it really means to find home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rosner (The Yellow Bird Sings) delivers an engrossing story inspired by the postwar lives of Jewish children who were hidden during the war. Seven-year-old Roger spent most of the war growing up in safety at the Convent of Sainte Marie de Sion, but in 1946, the church insists on keeping him, prompting Roger's aunt to sue for custody. A parallel narrative follows siblings Ana and Oskar, whose parents send them to the Polish countryside. Near the war's end, they're taken by a Jewish woman reclaiming Jewish children to live in Israel, which excites Ana but upsets the younger Oskar, who's grown attached to their foster parents. Twenty years later, Roger, now a professor in Israel, meets Renata, a British archeologist. They're drawn to each another, but their romance is derailed when Renata reveals her parents were German. Ana, meanwhile, lives in a kibbutz with her husband, who wants to raise their children there, but Ana would rather leave the community; while Oskar falls in love with a talented violinist. When the siblings learn their foster mother is ill, they consider returning to Poland, and surprising revelations about Renata's past explain why her family left Germany during the war. Rosner wrings a great deal of emotion from the various portraits, and she does an admirable job of exploring the characters' conflicted loyalties. Fans of Jewish historical fiction will be moved.
