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This is a powerful story that captures vast historical forces within the workings of a single family. The broad sweep of the narrative traces the author's father's movements across the globe from Nazi occupied Vienna to small town Ontario. It portrays the unimaginable terror of being forced to leave one's home and family at the age of seventeen and the courage and determination that was summoned to restart and rebuild a new life in a strange country, alone and afraid. It depicts a painful inheritance of family secrets and disconnection, as well as the powerful bonds of love that can hold a family together. At its heart it is a carefully researched and beautifully written account of one woman's journey to unravel the deep silences surrounding her own identity and to claim her place in the family and in the world. Joanne Saul, author of Writing the Roaming Subject: The Biotext in Canadian Literature and co-owner of Type Books in Toronto The Holocaust did not end in 1945. What happened accompanied survivors and their descendants throughout their lives. Dancing with my Father is the touching story of how a father and daughter came to terms with it. Parents determine the family memory for decades. But children instinctively feel that there are gaps in their memory which are crucial for understanding their own identity. Parent-child relationships often have more the character of boxing matches, with verbal attacks and causing deep injuries. Dancing with my Father points out more the careful, cautious, respectful relationship. It also shows that truth is not immediately accessible, that you have to circle around it, look at it from all sides and after years finally get closer to it and each other. Christian Kloesch (historian and provenance researcher at Technisches Museum Vienna) In Dancing with My Father, Jo Sorochinsky tells a compelling account of what it meant for her father to be raised Catholic in Vienna, only to find as a teenager that he was nonetheless a target of Nazi extermination because his parents had converted from Judaism. It recounts the way in which her family travelled through secrets and lies, all couched in the silence of deep suffering. It lays bare the trauma of experiencing antisemitism in its most violent form, a trauma that does not let up with age. Sorochinsky, who emigrated from Ireland to Canada at the age of seven and was raised Roman Catholic, brings us along with her as she confronts the truth, and the significant impact that not knowing had on her childhood and adulthood. It is a rich and important story, one carefully researched, that captures the horror of the Holocaust and its wrenching mark on those who experienced it directly, as well as on the generation that followed. At the same time, it is a layered story of persistence, love and ultimately, a family's reconciliation with its past. Stephanie J. Urdang, writer, journalist, author of Mapping My Way Home Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa; And Still They Dance: Women, War and the Struggle for Change in Mozambique

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Fifty years as a curious daughter fuelled the author's quest to unearth her father hidden past as a teenager in Nazi Vienna. Tenacity and a refusal to accept his attempt at keeping her out sustained her pursuit. Her determination to know his past was driven by the need to know who she was. After 40-plus years working in Toronto (with short stints in Zambia and El Salvador) as an employment counsellor for women, as a chair and dean in a community college, and as an associate director of governance for Ontario colleges, the author moved to a rural community in south-eastern Ontario where she began working on this story. Though the ten-year journey into her father's pain-filled past extracted a heavy toll on both of them, the resulting understanding and knowledge deepened the love between them. Dancing with My Father is their story. The author and her husband live in Ottawa, Canada.

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