My Mother’s Wars, by Lillian Faderman
"Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story, with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality and earthy grace, in every sentence."
—Amy Bloom, author of Away
Lillian Faderman’s mother was an immigrant, a garment worker, a woman in love with a man who would never marry her, a single mother, and a jew desperately trying to bring her family to America during the Holocaust.
Regret infused her life and Faderman swore she’d never live a life like her mother’s, but as she writes in the introduction, “though I’d known all her secrets, I hadn’t known her.”
Faderman wrote this book to try to understand her mother. It's a tale of making it on one’s own in a time when an unmarried mother was a pariah, and an examination of forgiving one’s family the turns they made.
My Mother's Wars has the sweep of early twentieth century history, but unlike most books and biographies about the period, there is no triumphant overcoming of hardship, only a puzzled making do. The story of a real life.
Narrated by Suzanne Toren who narrated the excellent Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
--Willow Pennell
