Send for Me (Compact Disc)
Staff Reviews
In the pantheon of WWII novels, this slim volume will surely become a book club favorite. Annalise and her Jewish family run a popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany. She is a dutiful teenager helping her parents while experincing typical teenage heartache and desire. The atmosphere is turning dark slowly as Jews are persecuted throughout the country. As a young married woman with a small child, Lise and Walter are sponsored to immigrate to the US but without her beloved parents. Two generations later, Clare has a new love but with baggage. When she finds her grandmother's letters from her great grandmother, she begins to understand the struggle that all humans have in finding happiness. The snippets from the letters are from Fox's own grandmother. The poignancy of their attempt to leave Germany is palpable. Add this to your shelf!
— ValerieFebruary 2021 Indie Next List
“I was deeply moved by this beautifully written and fascinating novel about four generations of Jewish women, based on a series of letters written by Fox’s great-grandmother in Germany to her grandmother in Milwaukee between 1938 and 1941. Annelise leaves Germany with her husband and child at the cusp of World War II and emigrates to Milwaukee, where a new life awaits. But she leaves behind her parents, who desperately wait for visas to join her. Memories play a deep part in the novel, as do the (sometimes) rocky relationships between mothers and daughters. I’m sure that this excellent novel will find a place on many reading group lists.”
— Ken Favell, Books & Company, Oconomowoc, WI
Winter 2022 Reading Group Indie Next List
“A really beautiful addition to WWII fiction about the heartbreaking truth of separating families and the bonds between mothers and daughters.”
— Hannah Harlow, Book Shop of Beverly Farms, Beverly Farms, MA
Description
An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.
Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Luckily Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.
Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future. A novel of dazzling emotional richness, Send for Me is a major departure for this acclaimed author, an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.