The Lost Family is an extraordinary read, the kind of book that
makes you sob and smile, the kind that gives you hope.... It is
compassionate, masterful and disturbingly contemporary."--Tatiana de
Rosnay, bestselling author of Sarah's Key
The New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us creates a
vivid portrait of marriage, family, and the haunting grief of World War
II in this emotionally charged, beautifully rendered story that spans a
generation, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha's to savor its brisket
bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and
head chef Peter Rashkin. With his movie-star good looks and tragic past,
Peter, a survivor of Auschwitz, is the most eligible bachelor in town.
But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the
restaurant hoping to catch his eye. He has resigned himself to a
solitary life. Running Masha's consumes him, as does his terrible guilt
over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife,
Masha--the restaurant's namesake--and two young daughters perished.
Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model,
appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter's guard. Though she is twenty
years his junior, the two begin a passionate, whirlwind courtship. When
June unexpectedly becomes pregnant, Peter proposes, believing that
beginning a new family with the woman he loves will allow him to let go
of the horror of the past. But over the next twenty years, the indelible
sadness of those memories will overshadow Peter, June, and their
daughter Elsbeth, transforming them in shocking, heartbreaking, and
unexpected ways.
Jenna Blum artfully brings to the page a husband devastated by a grief
he cannot name, a frustrated wife struggling to compete with a ghost she
cannot banish, and a daughter sensitive to the pain of both her own
family and another lost before she was born. Spanning three cinematic
decades, The Lost Family is a charming, funny, and elegantly
bittersweet study of the repercussions of loss and love.
