- DESCRIPTION
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the powerful bonds of family.
Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Luckily Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.
Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future. A novel of dazzling emotional richness that is based on letters from Lauren Fox's own family, Send for Me is a major departure for this acclaimed author, an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.
LAUREN FOX, who earned her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, is the author of the novels Days of Awe, Still Life with Husband, and Friends Like Us. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Marie Claire, Parenting, Psychology Today, The Rumpus, and Salon. She lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two daughters.
"An anthropological excavation... It is haunted throughout by the endlessly fascinating question of inheritance. How much of our stories -- and which parts -- truly belong to us?... The book is a real achievement -- beautifully written, deeply felt, tender and thoughtful... The storytelling is patient, generous... The major accomplishment of "Send for Me" [is] its vivid depiction of a family's heartbreak, its rending and rebuilding." - Clare Lombardo, New York Times Book Review
"Incandescent... Send for Me reads like a memoir but has the kind of intimate detail born in the imagination of a novelist at the top of her game." - People
"Extraordinarily nuanced and moving... Fox elegantly incorporates lines and short excerpts of her own great-grandmother's letters, adding to the power and intimacy of this fine novel." - The National Book Review
"An artfully constructed and richly absorbing novel that shows how love is strengthened, not weakened, over distance and time." - Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Lauren Fox's newest novel, Send for Me, is a quiet, heartbreaking, intergenerational story that highlights the insidious racism against Jews in World War II and the lingering effects of family trauma... Fox's writing is so deft, the story so subtle and sad, flipping seamlessly from World War II Germany to modern-day Milwaukee. It doesn't put you smack dab in the center of Nazi violence or concentration camp nightmares, but flits around the edges of that brutal history to tell a new, altogether different tale--a story of lucky ones who escaped, and the guilt that haunts them... a richly imagined, lyrically written story that belongs among novels such as The Book Thief and All the Light We Cannot See. The year is still young, but I'll guarantee this will be on my list of favorites from 2021." - Suzanne Perez, NPR.com
