A heartbreaking remembrance that’s historically compelling, vividly graphic, and tenderly evocative.
In this memoir, Morgan and Sigal recount the harrowing tale of Sigal’s family’s journey from German-occupied Lithuania to postwar Canada.
On June 23, 1941, the Kron Family—Meyer and Gita and their two daughters, Ruta (co-author Sigal) and Tamara—were on a rural road in northern Lithuania, on their way to Latvia and then Russia, hoping to outrun the German invaders who were intent upon murdering every Jewish person they encountered. The family’s only transportation was a horse and cart, which carried the two children and Shana, Meyer’s widowed mother. The Krons were not alone: Hundreds of others from their hometown of Siauliai, Lithuania—known in Yiddish as Shavl—and elsewhere were making the same journey. When German dive-bombers, known as Stukas, started strafing the road, the refugees first jumped into ditches to hide and then turned back to Shavl. Soon afterward, the Soviet Army, which still controlled Lithuania, rounded up some 700 ethnic Lithuanians and Jews in the dead of night, including Gita’s uncle Aharon “Ore” Shifman, a former mill owner, and his wife, Hoda.The Soviets labeled all those arrested as “potential troublemakers” and eventually sent them to Siberia—never to be seen again. When the Germans took control of Lithuania, they forced Jewish residents to switch houses with the poorest people in an area called Ezero-Traku. Armed men often entered the ghetto at night to terrorize the inhabitants, steal their goods, and march them to their deaths. Meyer, an engineer specializing in leather production, and Gita, who worked as his secretary, each had skills that the Soviet and German armies needed, which afforded them greater freedom of movement—and which ultimately saved their lives.
In riveting, novelistic prose, Morgan transports readers directly into the daily personal experiences of Lithuanian Jews during the German occupation. The remembrance effectively reports Sigal’s story, drawing on her recollections of the horrors of her childhood years. The authors punctuate the narrative with stunning moments that recount excruciating pain, sacrifice, and tenderness. One passage describes a mass killing of Jewish people, forced to march in eerie silence to their death in a killing field, where their captors ordered them to lie in a trench on top of the dead bodies of the people who came before them: “Some would stare down into people they had known all of their lives, while others were cheek-by-cheek with the grotesquely contorted faces of complete strangers.” In one of many short, poignant episodes, set in 1944, Ruta’s mother, who placed her young daughter with a Catholic family, came up to the girl’s new bedroom window, smiled warmly at her, and showed her rosary beads: “Ruta read it as a sign that she had her mother’s approval to go to church and become a Catholic. It meant survival for her.” Morgan, a veteran newspaper journalist for the Vancouver Sunand other publications, effectively grounds the emotional story in historical accuracy, presenting factual details—such as dates and locations—with precision.
A heartbreaking remembrance that’s historically compelling, vividly graphic, and tenderly evocative.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781038330437
Page Count: 366
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
