The Butcher's Daughter by Florence Grende

Luminous and profound, ferocious and sublime, The Butcher's Daughter will move you beyond measure. -Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House and Love and Fury It is not only the clearest view we are ever likely to get of the myriad and intimate ways that trauma is inherited and suffering passed on, it is also witness to the fact that the strength it takes to prevail is also part of that inheritance. The Butcher's Daughter is a deeply personal account of growing up in the aftermath of atrocity.

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Honorable Mention in the Hoffer Memoir category. The Butcher's Daughter has been chosen as finalist for the First Horizon Eric Hoffer 2017 Book Award, recognizing 'superior work by a debut author.' Short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. It is a book meant for all adults and young adults interested in: the immigrant experience of a family across generations, coming of age in the Bronx, Eastern European Jewish culture, survival and partisan fighting in the frigid and dangerous woods of WWII Eastern Poland, living with and transmitting trauma, and for those just interested in a compelling story. How was it to be both hunter and hunted, as Tateh was, taking up arms, bartering for and stealing food, fighting for another day of life, wounded and recovering, while protecting others hiding in the forest-the old, the infirm, the children?Īnd what was it like for the narrator, after the war, child of these two people, Mameh and Tateh, who held their stories close? And each of them haunted by the dead? The Butcher's Daughter lays flesh on the bones of their stories.

What was it like to hide with your family in the dense forests of Poland for two long years, as Mameh did, living in a hole in the ground, while being alert, always alert, to the sounds of Nazis and their dogs?

The Butcher's Daughter by Florence Grende