Florence Grende
'The Butcher's Daughter' has been short-listed for the prestigious 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize.What was it like to hide with your family in the dense forests of Poland for two long years, as Mameh did, living in a hole in the ground, while alert, always alert, to the sounds of Nazis and their dogs?How was it to be both hunter and hunted, as Tateh was, taking up arms, bartering for and stealing food, fighting for another day of life, wounded and recovering, while protecting others living in the forest-- the old, the infirm, the children.And what was it like for the narrator after the war, growing up with these two people, Mameh and Tateh, her parents, who held their stories close. And each of them haunted by the dead? The Butcher’s Daughter, lays flesh on the bones of their stories.In language that is at once lyrical and graphic the book unfolds like memory, in pieces forming a whole that divides into three sections. It recounts not only the narrator's journey of growing up with these two Holocausts survivors, but as well her efforts to discover their stories and lay her own demons to rest.
