Daughter of the Enemy - Softcover

Pal-Brown, Marie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997260955 ISBN 13: 9780997260953

Publisher: Lagoon House Press, LLC, 2018

Synopsis

A child is born in a time of war and, when she is five years old, her father, a soldier in the German Wehrmacht, is killed in battle. Not until that child is grown will she understand the full horror of her country's role in that war. Then begins a long and painful reckoning, a quest for identity and a way to remember a father beloved but nevertheless on the wrong side of history. Marie Pal-Brown's moving and beautifully written memoir faces, without flinching, the complexity of that reckoning. Daughter of the Enemy is both a personal and social history--it recounts how a ravaged people survived the hardships of WWII and postwar Germany and succumbed to the silence surrounding the Holocaust. It weaves, from the frayed strands of memory, a fully human accounting of coming to terms with hard truths, finally creating a tender memorial to the father lost in war. This is a journey, and the journey is a story that has been waiting to be told. 

About this title

Review:

Marie Pal-Brown's suspenseful and vivid account grants the reader entry into the mind and psyche of a German child surviving the end of World War II and the vicissitudes of its aftermath. A memoir of an individuation like hers is a treasure -- a life's work. A valuable example of a writer gathering her memories to lay the groundwork for a final healing. 

Patrick Roth, Author, Starlite Terrace

The best memoirs draw you into another person's world in intimate and moving ways. Daughter of the Enemy does just this, specifically evoking the author's conflicted girlhood of hardship as World War II draws to a close in her native Germany. Throughout the post-war years, just as the fractured nation must face up to its tragic past and what the future might hold, the author struggles through loss, guilt, and forgiveness to ultimately come to terms with who she truly is.

Jean Hastings Ardell, Co-author, Making My Pitch: A Woman's Baseball Odyssey

About the Author:

Marie-Pal Brown was born and raised in a small town near Cologne, Germany. After completing her education in England and Munich, she emigrated to California. With a background in applied language studies, she has coauthored three books of lexicography. Her poetry has been included in various anthologies. She resides in Long Beach, California, with her husband, the actor Garrett M. Brown.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lagoon House Press, LLC
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0997260955
• ISBN 13: 9780997260953
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 406