Overview

Just Enough to Start Over follows the lives of three German Jewish sisters—Bertha, Annalena, and Hilde—throughout the turbulent twentieth century: their early years of prosperity in Mannheim; the rise of the Nazi Party; the family's escape to China; their experiences as refugees in Shanghai, New York, London, and Toronto; and the struggle of Bertha's American daughter to find her own identity apart from her mother's difficult history. Interlaced with the sisters' journeys are the stories of the family’s three valuable paintings, first stolen then transported through wartime Europe and the Soviet Union as plundered art. Historical figures including the Austrian Expressionist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Max Beckmann, and members of the Soviet Trophy Brigade are woven into the fictional story. Just Enough to Start Over is a moving novel of exile, loss, and, ultimately, resilience, as well as the saving grace of creating art.

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9781589882089

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Reviews

""This beautiful and deeply moving novel by Sara Gothelf Bloom takes us through a very hard time in history, but there is so much soul on display that one can only rejoice. Hanna is among the vivid characters in contemporary fiction, and she--with the Dubrovsky sisters from the earlier generation of this marvelous family--will stay in my mind. Just Enough to Start Over is an impressive achievement, one that reminded me at various times of I.B. Singer. A vivid chronicle, told with poetic specificity and hard-won elegance."" --Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and Borges and Me

Author Information

Sara Gothelf Bloom was raised in Brooklyn, and spent much of her adult life in Germany, working at the Heidelberg Opera and as a freelance concert singer. For more than twenty years, she toured the country as a soloist with a small ensemble doing concerts of Yiddish songs for German audiences. Just Enough to Start Over is her first novel.

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