The Wholeness of a Broken Heart Book

The moving story of four generations of Jewish women, narrated in their own voices, spanning two continents, and viewed through a contemporary American mother-daughter relationship.In this virtuosic display of talent, Katie Singer tells the affecting story of the troubled relationship between a young Jewish woman, Hannah Felber, and her mother, Celia, rooted in the stories of three generations of the women in Hannah's family. Narrated by Hannah, Celia, and others from beyond the grave, The Wholeness of a Broken Heart seeks to understand and triumph over the disturbing legacy of the Holocaust in the American Jewish experience.To Hannah, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, her mother's love is everything. The two share an almost symbiotic bond, until Hannah becomes a young woman and Celia suddenly and mysteriously shuts her daughter out of her life. On her own for the first time and struggling to understand her mother's unexplained rejection, Hannah looks to her Eastern European roots for answers--to the women whose stories may unlock the otherwise inscrutable behaviors and relationships in her American family.Like Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, The Wholeness of a Broken Heart offers an understanding of the immigrant experience through the stories of the women who, in Katie Singer's novel, hold the world together. Here Singer brings to vivid life an all- but-forgotten world, as she illuminates our contemporary one."Katie Singer is a gifted and compelling writer who tells a good story and burrows into her characters' psyches."--Phillip LopateRead More