Klara's Truth: A Novel

(Paperback)

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It is May 2014, and Dr. Klara Liebermanforty-nine, single, professor of archaeology at a small liberal arts college in Maine, a contained person living a contained lifehas just received a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, that will dramatically change her life. Her father, she learnsthe man who has been absent from her life for the last forty-three years, and about whom she has long been desperate for informationis dead. Has been for many years, in fact, which Bessie clearly knew. But now the Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during WWII, and Bessie wants the money. Klara has little interest in the moneybut she does want answers about her father. She flies to Warsaw, determined to learn more.

In Poland, Klara begins to piece together her fathers, and her own, story. She also connects with extended family, begins a romantic relationship, and discovers her calling: repairing the hundreds of forgotten, and mostly destroyed, pre-War Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Along the way, she becomes a more integrated, embodied, and interpersonally connected individualone with the tools to make peace with her past and, for the first time in her life, build purposefully toward a bigger future.

Reviews

"In her beautifully written and riveting debut novel, Friedman propelled me on a journey to post-WWII Poland where the ghosts of a once vibrant Jewish community haunted me. With great sensitivity, Friedman uses her experience as a social worker and therapist to show how a rejecting mother and hidden childhood sexual trauma froze Klara's heart and left her fearful of close relationships. I rejoiced as Klara gradually finds purpose and love in this engrossing family saga that I could not put down."
--Florence Reiss Kraut, author of Street Corner Dreams and How to Make a Life

Author Bio

Susan Weissbach Friedman is a psychotherapist with a specialty in women's issues, family therapy, and trauma-focused therapy. A graduate of Hamilton College, Boston University's MSW/MPH program, and the Ackerman Institute for Couples and Families, she has also completed EMDR and Somatic Experiencing (SE) training in trauma therapy techniques and has been in a practicing clinician for more than twenty-five years. Originally from Long Island, she now lives in Westchester County, New York, where she enjoys practicing yoga and mindfulness, going for walks in nature, listening to music, and spending time near the ocean. Susan has been married to her husband for thirty years and has two daughters in their twenties. Klara's Truth is her first novel.