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Published by Harper Perenial
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A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery, Bending
Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in
the wake of brutal terror. Weaving together the voices of three
generations of women, Leslie Gilbert-Lurie and her mother, Rita Lurie,
provide powerful -- and inspiring -- evidence of the resilience of the
human spirit, relevant to every culture in every corner of the world.
By turns unimaginably devastating and incredibly uplifting, this
firsthand account of survival and psychological healing offers a
strong, poignant message of hope in our own uncertain times. Rita Lurie was five years old when she was forced
to flee her home in Poland to hide from the Nazis. From the summer of
1942 to mid-1944, she and fourteen members of her family shared a
nearly silent existence in a cramped, dark attic, subsisting on scraps
of raw food. Young Rita watched helplessly as first her younger brother
then her mother died before her eyes. Motherless and stateless, Rita
and her surviving family spent the next five years wandering throughout
Europe, waiting for a country to accept them. The tragedy of the
Holocaust was only the beginning of Rita's story. Decades later, Rita is a mother herself, the
matriarch of a close-knit family in California. Yet in addition to
love, Rita unknowingly passes to her children feelings of fear,
apprehension, and guilt. Her daughter Leslie, an accomplished lawyer,
media executive, and philanthropist, began probing the traumatic events
of her mother’s childhood to discover how Rita's pain has affected not
only Leslie's life and outlook but also Leslie's daughter's, Mikaela's.
A decade-long collaboration between mother and daughter, Bending
Toward the Sun reveals how deeply the Holocaust remains in the
hearts and minds of survivors, influencing even the lives of their
descendants. It also sheds light on the generational reach of any
trauma, beyond the initial victim. Drawing on interviews with the other
survivors and with the Polish family who hid five-year-old Rita, Leslie
and Rita bring together the stories of three generations of women --
mother, daughter, and granddaughter -- to understand the legacy that
unites, inspires, and haunts them all. pub date: 2010-09-07 | paperback | 9780061776724 |
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