Europe, Memoirs, Holocaust, History 

Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award (2019)Kindle Book Award for NonFiction (2018)Reader's Favorite Book Award Nominee for NonFiction/Memoir (Bronze) (2017) Eric Hoffer Book Award for NonFiction/Memoir (Honorable Mention) (2017) Heartfelt and spare, The Butcher's Daughter is a riveting account of what it means to be the daughter of Holocaust survivors.Florence Grende knew from childhood on that something evil resided in her household, separate from the rages and tears that gripped her parents--that evil an entity her parents called Der Melchome, The War. It rested in the thick silences surrounding her as her parents forged on creating a new life all the while ignoring the impact of the past. A past that, while sheltered in shadow, nonetheless haunted them all. In short chapters divided into three sections, Grende leads the reader on a journey of discovery and beyond. She begins (Outside America Waits) by vividly recounting her 1950's and 1960's Bronx life. Events come alive as she describes in graphic, sensual detail her experiences and conflicts while straddling an immigrant Jewish life in a post-War American world. Section two (Der Melchome) shifts to her family's survival in the frozen Polish forests of WWII. Using her father's post-War testimonial outlining his partisan activities, as well as research and bits of stories told her, Grende reimagines, with gripping imagery, both of her parents' survival struggle. Section three (Afterwards) recounts her parents' post-War attempts to rebuild their lives, first in Poland, then in Germany. It describes the years after her father died and her ongoing troubled relationship with her mother. This section also describes Grende's week in Wannsee, Germany, where, with other descendents of survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich, she seeks to confront the past and lay demons to rest.Written with brutal honesty and compassion The Butcher's Daughter embraces the beauty, complexity and resilience of the human spirit.The Butcher's Daughter is a deeply personal account of growing up in the aftermath of atrocity. It is not only the clearest view we are ever likely to get of the myriad and intimate ways that trauma is inherited and suffering passed on, it is also witness to the fact that the strength it takes to prevail is also part of that inheritance. Luminous and profound, ferocious and sublime, The Butcher's Daughter will move you beyond measure. --Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House and Love and Fury In a clear voice that manages to be both haunted and compassionate, Grende reminds us that "Monster and victim can be one and the same." Tackling subjects as harsh as war and family dysfunction, she writes with exquisite attention to sound and prose rhythms, reminding us, as all masterful writers do, that what you say matters because of how you say it. What a stunning debut.--Barbara Hurd, author of Listening to the Savage: On River Notes and Half-heard Melodies Florence Grende's memoir wields the keen, bracing edge of utter honesty...She writes of the bits and pieces of rage, endurance, bafflement, grief, and the will to live. Here is a story of a woman trying to move forward in the new land of America but who has been raised with the shades of the European dead for company. The terse, poetic prose makes the reader feel what it was like to grow up and live with silences that truly were unspeakable. --Baron Wormser, Poet Laureate of Maine, 2000-2006, author of The Road Washes out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living off the Grid - from Amzon