Overview

In Love and Rutabaga, Claire Hsu Accomando reflects on her formative years growing up in war-torn France. Born in 1937 to a French mother and Chinese father, Accomando was just a child when her father departed for China on diplomatic duty in 1941. Left behind, she and her younger brothers were raised by their mother and grandparents in the small village of Rahon during the German occupation. Despite the fear and uncertainty of World War II, Accomando paints a surprisingly joyful and richly textured portrait of those years. Her grandparents' home became a sanctuary - not just for their family, but for anyone in need of refuge. Her grandmother's love of music and storytelling brought beauty and wonder into a world clouded by conflict. Blending humor, tenderness, and the innocence of a child's view, Accomando recounts the everyday moments that defined her childhood. The title's pairing of ""love"" and ""rutabaga"" captures the dual essence of affection and survival that sustained her family. Through engaging storytelling and vivid detail, she offers a unique memoir of resilience, warmth, and unexpected happiness in the midst of war.

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9781962081313

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Reviews

Born in 1937 to a French mother and a Chinese father, Claire Hsu Accomando experienced a bittersweet early child- hood growing up in occupied France during the war. Her engaging memoir, Love and Rutabaga-the title refers to the twin sources of her family's salvation-chronicles the events of her family's life from 1941, when her diplomat father left to take a job in China, until 1945. During these years, Ms. Accomando, her mother and two younger brothers resided in the village of Rahon with her grandparents. Their home, a bedrock of warmth and security, was enlivened by her grandmother's passion for music, stories and beauty. Bustling with family, friends, servants and strangers needing refuge, the household schooled Ms. Accomando in life's hardships. Yet Ms. Accomando says that the war years were ""the happiest of my childhood."" With a strong feeling for irony, she writes convincingly from a child's point of view, reconstructing her early years with rich details, full conversations and fascinating stories. -​ Constance Decker Thompson, New York Times Claire Hsu Accomando vividly resurrects her childhood view of the world in this memoir. To the little girl Claire, love and the vile vegetable rutabaga were the two most essential things because they sustained her and her family throughout the war years in German-occupied France. Accomando was the daughter of a French mother and a Chinese father, a diplomat who was trapped in Russia during the war. Claire, her baby brother, and her pregnant mother left Paris in the fall of 1941, and went to live with her grandparents in the south of France. There are fleeting glimpses here of Accomando's mother, her body swollen with pregnancy riding off on her bicycle to carry messages for the Resistance. There are loving pictures of her grandmother, a concert pianist, who was determined to give Claire piano lessons even if the war rips their home apart. You might expect that it would be jarring to have a pint-sized narrator telling you about sabotage, sacrifice and death, but the child Claire's voice so full of bewildered fascination turns out to be just the right voice for conveying the chaos of war. In several passages, Accomando recalls a melancholy phrase of her grandmother's, something about the cruelty of objects that survive long after their owners. This wartime memoir is filled with images of such cruel objects. But reading Love and Rutabaga will make you feel thankful that books also survive the people and times that have long since vanished. -​ Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, National Public Radio The author paints a vivid portrait of personal devastation and deprivation during World War II in Vichy, France, doubly poignant from a child's perspective. Amid such misery and fear, minor daily events attain great significance, but the account, written by Accomando many years later, retains childhood's essential ingredient: hope. Indeed, the bane of the family's existence-rutabaga-actually sustains them, along with the bonds of love. The author skillfully strips her prose of the superfluous to portray more palpably the family's struggle and creates a compelling narrative, gripping from start to finish. -​ Bob Ivey, Library Journal A fascinating, entertaining and positive book, one of those rare creations that will find an appreciative audience with readers and can also be studied in classrooms. This work belongs in everyone's library. - Asian Journal At the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII, this intimate memoir about a close-knit and creative family, against the backdrop of war, family separation, and resistance, is a moving reminder of the dangers of fascism. - Kristin J. Anderson, author of Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged

Author Information

Claire Hsu Accomando was born in Geneva, Switzerland, to a Chinese father and French-Armenian mother. She spent her early childhood in rural France, separated from her father who was in China during the second world war. Love and Rutabaga, first published by St. Martin's Press and released in a French translation by L'Harmattan in 2020, tells the story of those war years.Reunited after the war, the family moved to New York when Claire's father joined the United Nations. While she graduated from New York University with a science degree, she was always drawn more to the arts. Claire taught History through Art and English as a Second Language in Southern California for many years. Claire Hsu Accomando lives in Bonita, California.

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