Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search For Her Mother’s History

In this second book of her trilogy, Children of the Holocaust, Where She Came From and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma, Helen Epstein reconstructs the lives of three generations of Central-European women: her great-grandmother Theresa; her grandmother Pepi and her mother Franci - all dressmakers. As in Children of the Holocaust, she creates a hybrid narrative that braids techniques of journalism, biography, and memoir, and provides a new perspective on the social and cultural history of Jewish women of the 19th and 20th centuries. With this family history, Epstein adds a vivid and telling chapter to the reconstruction of Jewish women’s history, one life at a time. The settings range from the Bohemian town of Brtnice; to the Belle Epoque Vienna of assimilated Jews; to newly independent and cosmopolitan Prague in the 1920s, where Pepi ran a fashion salon; to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and finally New York. It is a compelling account, one that any woman trying to recover her history will value. - Kirkus Reviews

In Epstein’s expert and sensitive hands, truth becomes not only stranger than fiction, but more magnetic, wise and powerful. - Gloria Steinem

Written with her superb talent for storytelling, her tale is profoundly human. - Elie Wiesel