About this item
"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 KeyThe 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.
About the Author
JENNA BLUM is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels THOSE WHO SAVE US and THE STORMCHASERS and the novella "The Lucky One" in the postwar collection GRAND CENTRAL. Jenna is also one of Oprah's Top 30 Women Writers. Jenna's third novel, THE LOST FAMILY, will be published June 5, 2018 by Harper Collins.Jenna's debut novel THOSE WHO SAVE US was a New York Times bestseller; a Boston Globe bestseller; the winner of the 2005 Ribalow Prize, adjudged by Elie Wiesel; a BORDERS book club pick, a perennial book club favorite, and the # 1 bestselling novel in Holland. Jenna's second novel, THE STORMCHASERS, is a Boston Globe bestseller, a Target Emerging Authors pick, and a bestseller in Holland and France. Jenna's newest work, her novella "The Lucky One," was published in anthology GRAND CENTRAL, published by Penguin in July 2014. Jenna's third novel, THE LOST FAMILY, is forthcoming from Harper Collins in 2018, and Jenna is currently working on her fourth novel. Jenna has been writing since she was 4 and professionally since she was 16, when she won Seventeen Magazine's National Fiction Contest with her short story "The Legacy of Frank Finklestein." Jenna is a graduate of Kenyon College (B.A., English) and Boston University (M.A., Creative Writing) ; she taught creative writing and journalism for Boston University for five years, was editor of AGNI literary magazine, and has taught fiction for 20 years for Boston's Grub Street Writers, where she currently teaches master novel workshops. Dividing her time between Boston and the Midwest, Jenna has written the screenplay for THOSE WHO SAVE US and is writing her fourth novel. Jenna loves to visit book clubs in person, by phone, and via Skype. Please contact her on Facebook (Jenna Blum) , on Twitter (@jenna_blum) and on her website, www.jennablum.com.
