The memoir of a woman who was raised as a Roman Catholic by Jewish parents who survived the Holocaust, and her adult discovery of their abandoned lives. Riveting.

I read this book in one day! It is so compelling. Makes you really think about identity, family, trauma. A very complex story told very well.

The Holocaust side of this book is fascinating and you'll race through the pages. But I felt like the author going into her eventual coming out as a lesbian took away from her family's history and cheapened the book somehow.

Riveting, heartbreaking, and full of love. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the Holocaust, family stories, trauma, and healing.

Helen is a Boston lawyer. She and her sister Lara know their parents survived WW2, but they don't know the entire truth until they start digging. Turns out her family is Jewish and were Holocaust survivors. They disguised themselves as Catholics to survive. Their parents resist digging into the past, but the sisters persist. Their father spent 6 years in a Gulag in Siberia; their mother disguised herself as an Italian soldier to join her sister in Rome. Helen has to deal with the added problem of coming out to parents who excel at secrets. She's still digging.

The strongest part of this book is Fremont's narrative: the process of uncovering her family's story, and the fascinating and unusual story itself. The book is well-written, with some truly lovely passages. At times, though, it seems to get tangled up in itself: metaphors sound pretty but on second glance don't fully make sense; descriptions don't always contribute to the narrative but instead seem self-fulfilling.

Still, it's very worth reading for its main accomplishment: a new angle on Holocaust literature.

Fascinating story about a child of Holocaust survivors who had concealed their Jewish identity even from their children. Beautifully written and wonderfully introspective.