Show and Tell Finds: an 1889 Sampler, a Children's Ecology Quilt, and Library Quilts

It's always interesting to see what the Clawson Quilting Sisters bring to Show-and-Tell sharing time!

Sue Baker brought a family heirloom dating to 1889--a sampler made by her grandmother Jane Tesen "in her eleventh year." It is in the original frame made by her Grandfather Tesen. Sue says she has furniture he made in the same wood.

Jane Jarvis Davey In The 11th Year of her Age
Save One Another
Blessed are the meek

Sophia Jane 'Jennie' Davey was born January 25, 1878, in St Austell, Cornwall, England to father Henry and mother Harriett. Jane made this sampler as a child living in Cornwall, England.

She was married three times and had two sons and three daughters. Jane died on July 24, 1956, in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Jane immigrated to America in 1894. On March 8,1898 in Port Orange, NY, Jane married Joshua Ivy (born 2/1818). Josh was born in Morris N.J. to James Ivey (born in England); he appears on the 1880 US Federal Census as a miner.

The 1900 US census in Franklin, Houghton, MI shows Josh worked as a copper miner. They later had children Harry and Betty. On December 12, 1905, Jane was granted an absolute divorce on the grounds of desertion. The 1910 US Federal Census for Dawson, MT shows Josh Ivey, 35 years old, working as a hired man on a ranch. It is likely this is Jane's husband as he was born in New Jersey to English-born parents!

On February 8, 1906, Jane married Arthur Geach in Ontonagon, MI. Jane was working as a domestic and Arthur was a miner. They had children John Lyne, Celeste Lillian, and William Arthur.

In 1910 the census shows they lived in Calumet, MI. Sue told me that her husband worked in the copper mine in Calumet. Arthur's WWI draft card shows he worked for the C&H Mining Company. His WWII Draft Card shows he worked at the Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant.

In 1920, Jane was living in Detroit where Arthur was a pipefitter in a factory, and in 1923 divorced him for 'non-support.' 1923 also saw the death of Jane's son Harry Ivey at age 21 in a mine accident. Harry and Arthur had gone to West Virginia to help start a mine. I expect the accident caused the divorce.

In 1924 Jane and Arthur remarried in Kanawa, West Virginia. I can't find their divorce. Arthur died in December 1942 of diabetes. He had been working for Ford as a machinist and lived in Dearborn, MI.

In 1926 Jane married Adolph Tesen in Kanawa, West Virginia. Adolph was a Norwegian immigrant who worked in the copper mines as a master carpenter. When a friend went to West Virginia to start a mine there he asked Adolph to be his carpenter. Jane did not care for W.V. She and her children returned to Detroit and the couple lived apart.

In 1930, Jane and Adolph were living with Jane's daughter Betty and her husband Francis Harrington. Also in the house was Betty's daughter Betty and two of her siblings, Celeste and William. Francis was a machinist in an auto plant, Betty sold hosiery, Celeste worked in advertising for a newspaper, and Adolph was unemployed. Adolph later returned to West Virginia while his Jane remained in Detroit. They remained separated.

A 1940 census shows Jane S. Tesen, age 61, married, and born in England, living in Detroit, MI. She had lived there for five years. She had an 8th grad education. She is listed as "mother-in-law." This is a mystery as the person next to her on the census does not appear to be someone from the family tree--Frank Valentine, age 61, was a debt collector for and an insurance company. 

Sue told me how her grandmother had thirteen pregnancies and seven living children. One child contracted polio. One died of Diptheria and another choked on a collar button. Her son Harry was killed in a mine explosion.

It is so interesting to think about the life ahead of the eleven-year-old girl who stitched that sample in Cornwall, England.

+++++

Tammy Porath shared a quilt she found for a few dollars. The blocks were all hand-painted or colored by children from across the world! Each block has an ecological theme. A block is dated 2005.

Peabody School, Wash. D.C. This elementary school is the early childhood campus of the Capitol Hill Cluster School with an arts integration focus.

Tierra del Sol Middle School, Lakeside, CA near San Diego CA. Danae Bacca. 2005. They are labeled a School of Arts and Sciences.

 Kakadu National Park, NT (Northern Territory of New Zealand) Ross Smith, S. A. [South Austrailia], Melissa

 [illegible, perhaps Jobary Golator] Placerville, CA

Save the Whales. The Oysters respond, Save me! Save me too!
Carrie Charleston, Washingtonville, NY

 Maddison, Forbes, Australia

 Allison, Lakes Middle School, Millsbury, OH

 Upper right, Adam Collister Elementary, Boise, ID

Miaya V. Hazeldale Ele., Sch., Aloha, OR; Jason Project Disappearing Wetlands, Berri Primary School, South Australia, by Kim. "Focusing on the diminishing marshes and swamps of the Louisiana bayou, "Disappearing Wetlands" utilizes NASA satellite imagery as it helps students better understand what wetlands are, why they are disappearing, and how to improve ecosystems management."

Cassie Loman; Daniel, Renwood Elem., Parma, OH, USA; Lia V., Fulmar Road School, Mahopac, New York; Ocean/River with Wetlands, Ocean/River without Wetlands.

Zach, Greenfield OH, USA; Tierra del Sol Middle School, Lakeside CA, near San Diego, CA, Danae Becca, 2005.

 on right, Hadley, Wichita, KS

*****

Our local library monthly quilt show this month has taken over the display cabinet! Theresa Nielson's wool applique is hanging there!

My wall hanging, below, uses vintage embroidery and a doily, beading, and my mother-in-law's counted cross stitch in the center.

Joanne Brown's original quilt was made for last year's ugly fabric challenge. 

Cathy Woodward teaches English; her quilt is For the Love of Books.

*****

My show-and-tell was my Winter Houses quilt, quilted and bound at last!

Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past by Sarah Parcak

"Empires fall but people rise."~ from Archeology From Space by Sarah Parcak

Perhaps it was the old National Geographics that Dad kept in the basement on a shelf, ordered by month and year. When I was bored I would go down and grab a dozen to read. I loved articles about Egypt and the evolution of mankind.

Or perhaps it was the big Time-Life book about early humans in the living room magazine rack. Or Gods, Graves, and Scholars which I read over and over as a teen.

By the time I took anthropology classes at college I was already long interested in humanity's distant past. I still enjoy reading articles about the latest finds and discoveries.

For Sarah Parcak, Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark fired her imagination. When she met Harrison Ford she brandished her fedora. (Hopefully, she never stapled it to her head to keep it on like Ford had to while filming!)

Parcak's grandfather was a WWII veteran of the 101st Airborne Division with a Ph.D. in forestry. He used aerial photography in his research.

Now Parcak is an archaeologist like Indy and uses space shots of Earth in her research. Archaeology from Space is the exciting story of how this cutting-edge technique helped her to discover thousands of previously unknown archeological sites, leading to new understandings of who we are by studying who we have been in the past.

I was enthralled by Parcak's imagining the life of an ancient Egyptian woman, spinning her story out of the excavated bones found at Tell Ibrahim Awad in Egypt.

She tells of the ups and downs of Egyptian empires to show how resilient humans are noting, "We've survived for over 200,000 years, and that's a decent track record." Yes, climate change is going to bring unimaginable challenges and disasters, but humans will survive.

Understanding how we have survived in the past helps us to understand--and affirm--our strengths. But sadly, looting has destroyed unstudied archeological sites all over the world. She describes landscapes littered with bones, mummy linens, and shards. The looted artifacts are sold online. Even the Christian founder of the craft and decor chain Hobby Lobby knowingly purchases stolen artifacts.

Parcak predicts all sites will be looted by mid-century. It is imperative to protect them. Her winning TED mission statement led to her creation of GlobalXplorer which gives the public a chance to participate in the important work of identifying unknown archeological sites using satellite imagery.

This is more than a book about digging around for the past; it's about the challenges of being a woman in archeology, envisioning new technologies, and how humans can use to past to better face the future.

I received a book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Archeology From Space
by Sarah Parcak
Henry Holt
Publication July 2019
$28 hardcover
ISBN: 978-1250198280

Tidal Flats by Cynthia Newberry Martin

I have been reading Cynthia Newberry Martin's blog How We Spend Our Days for several years and when she announced the publication of a novel I knew I would read it for I loved her quiet elegance and unique style.

I read Tidal Flats in two sittings; had I started it earlier in the day I would have read it in one!

"Up ahead she was surprised to see that the rocks veered quite dramatically to the left. When they'd started out, it had looked like a straight shot."~ from Tidal Flats by Cynthia Newberry Martin

After meeting Ethan, Cass has one future in mind: just her and Ethan together, forever. Ethan is an intrepid photographer who works in Afghanistan, his photographs featured on national magazines, indelibly etched images that include a portrait of the amber-eyed Afghani woman Setara.

Ethan needs Cass and he needs Afghanistan. Cass needs only Ethan. On the tidal flats one wet morning, Cass following Ethan across the treacherous rocks, they make a pact: Ethan will work three more years abroad, and Cass will consider having a child.

They marry and Cass waits at home alone, aware she can never have a child, knowing that events in her past have shut the door on any future as a mother.

Cass spends her days working at a home for elderly women where her soul is fed, a place that is better for her being there. The women have much to teach Cass.  "Look for the good things," she is told, "Your heart may surprise you some day." And, "Plans are good, but life is the thing. Living. And dancing even when the music changes."

Cass counts the days until Ethan is pledged to stay by her side, agonizing over her inability to agree to children. Life veers off her planned path when Ethan's fidelity becomes suspect.

"Like that ride where you swirl so fast, you stick to the side, the bottom falls out, and you're free."~from Tidal Flats by Cynthia Newberry Martin

As Cass wrestles with the demons of her past and the uncertainties of her present, she must decide what kind of future she wants to choose for herself: sticking to her plan or learning to forgive and embrace the life she may not want, but needs.

This haunting novel is a memorable read.

Praise for Tidal Flats:"Cynthia Newberry Martin is a tremendous writer, with a Woolfian talent for taking the full measure of small moments. Her work is both subtle and revelatory, and I've been waiting a long time for this book." ―Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers and Music for Wartime.
"For once, a novel of big ideas that is also filled with bold and uncommon events. In Tidal Flats, Cynthia Newberry Martin, a storyteller at the top of her game, creates a universe of betrayal, compassion, and regret in which two people’s love for each other is surpassed only by their loyalty to their convictions. I was glued to the page." ―Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

Tidal Flats
by Cynthia Newberry Martin
Bonhomie Press
ISBN 9781732676824
$26.95 hardcover, $9.89 Kindle

Helen Korngold Diary: September 29 through October 5, 1919

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

Continuing Helen Korngold's 1919 diary...
After several boring weeks at home, Helen gets a teaching position substituting at Maplewood High. She likes it much better than Wellston.


September
Monday 29
Washing. I didn’t help.

Tuesday 30
Finished up ironing.

October
Wednesday 1
Substituting at Maplewood High. I’m crazy about it. Can’t see why I didn’t take that job in the beginning. I was a big fool.

Tuesday 2
I certainly like Maple

Friday 3
Mr. Richmond & Gooch are dears

Saturday 4
Such nice children, too. Yom Kippur

Sunday 5
The school was beautiful.

NOTES:

Friday 3

A Wilbur I. Gooch appears on the 1920 St. Louis Federal Census working as a high school teacher. He was born in Minnesota in 1885 and was married to Nellie, age 22.

In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper of October 5, 1919, the licensing of auto drivers is discussed.

"A recommendation that every employed person driving an automobile should be compelled, by State law, to pass an examination and take out a license, is one of the remedies proposed for automobile accidents in the report of the June grand jury, submitted yesterday to Judge Klene. It was pointed out that in 1918 there were 420 persons killed in accidents and that the number in 1917 was 510. Many Of the deaths were due to automobile accidents, besides numerous persons crippled or injured. The estimate was made that damage from automobile and vehicle accidents alone amounts to 1525,000 a year."

Sales on fall fashions:



And a shipment of antique and modern Chinese embroidery arrived:

A SALE OF Chinese Embroidery Work
We have received a shipment of wonderful antique and modern hand-embroidery work from China and are placing it on sale tomorrow. Owing to lack of space in the Oriental Bazaar, this merchandise will be displayed on Squares on the Main Floor, as well as in the Sixth Floor Oriental Bazaar.
Mandarin Coats, besides being worn as negligees, may be cut and made into scarfs, runners and lamp shades. The colors and embroidery are beautiful. Prices are $10 and $15 Mandarin Skirts, beautifully embroidered on background of orange, red, blue, yellow, black and green. At $3, $5, and $15 each.
Even for children there are Mandarin Coat Suits, all-over embroidered, at $5 and $7.50
A special group of Obies, used as sashes to adorn the flowing gowns of Japanese women. Exquisitely woven in brocades, suitable for fancy bags, $5 and $10 apiece.
Sleeve bands that may be used for scarfs and other decorative uses. They are here in the greatest abundance of designs and colors, at $1.oo, $1.50 and $2 per pair. Skeleton Doilies by the hundreds. Little hand embroideries, so arranged as to be ready to be appliqued on doilies, table runners, lamp shades, etc. Your choice, 15c, 25c, 50c and $1 each.
 Mandarin Squares for fancy work, circle and oblong shape, $1.98 and $2.98
On sale on Squares 15, 16 and 17 on Main Floor, and in the Oriental Bazaar on Sixth Floor.

State-of-the-art home equipment promised to "eliminate the drudgery of hard work."

Outfit three rooms at $139.50 or $2.50 a week! $2.50 adjusted for inflation would be $37.07 today. What a bargain!


I love this Black Jack gum ad. My dad bought it and other Adams gums in the 1950s. You can find Black Jack today at specialty stores. I saw it in JoAnne Fabrics!

And I loved these brownies or elves making candy.

What an adorable ad of children's toys!


A whole page of movie, theater, and vaudeville-

Blowout Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russian, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow

I thought I should read Blowout by Rachel Maddow. Should being the giveaway word to my motivation. Instead of a dose of medicine that's good for me but hard to swallow, it was a terrifying funhouse ride that totally engaged my attention! Maddow weaves together a narrative of how we 'got to here' that illumines the present.

Maddow lays out the oil industry's history from Standard Oil to fracking to Putin's dream of Russia becoming the world's fuel provider to trolls on Facebook disseminating discord.

The oil industry has always been too big and wealthy and powerful to control, starting with John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil which drove out or took over the competition. The values have not changed; anything goes in the pursuit of increased production and mindboggling wealth. And power. Don't forget the obscene power.

The oil industry has always looked for better ways to get to the oil, using nuclear bombs and ocean drilling and fracking. Sure, messes happen. The best clean up tool they have developed is a big stick of paper towels.

Fracking was going to save the day! Years worth of 'clean' gas. So what if Oklahoma suffered 900 earthquakes in 2017?

I didn't know how Putin had gambled everything on the fossil fuel industry bringing Russia money and power across the globe. But they needed the technology to make it happen. And Rex Tillerson and Exxon/Mobile were planning to help him. Those pesky sanctions got in their way.

Business and capitalism is amoral; politics and justice and fairness are irrelevant. The prime directive is making money. You lobby for the best tax deals, pay workers the lowest wages possible, make deals with the Devil--if you are killing people, or the entire planet, cover it up and carry on making the big bucks.

The damage fossil fuels are doing to the planet is happening NOW, has been happening for a long time before we wised up to it. It isn't just when we take a jet or when we eat a half-pound burger or drive the kids to school. Getting that gas out of the ground it escapes. Lots of it. From the get-go, fossil fuels damage our world.

Maddow writes, Coal is done, and so is gas and oil but they don't know it yet.

Oh, the last desperate gasps of the old world struggling to hold on.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"...the oil and gas industry is essentially a big casino that can produce both power and triumphant great gobs of cash, often with little regard for merit. That equation invites gangsterism, extortion, thuggery, and the sorts of folks who enjoy these hobbies. Its practitioners have been lumbering across the globe of late, causing mindless damage and laying the groundwork for the global catastrophe that is the climate crisis but also reordering short-term geopolitics in a strong-but-dumb survival contest that renders everything we think of as politics as just theater. It's worth understanding why. And why now."~from Blowout by Rachel Maddow

from the publisher:

Rachel Maddow’s Blowout offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil-and-gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe—from Oklahoma City to Siberia to Equatorial Guinea—exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas. She shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the United States, and the West’s most important alliances. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, but ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson emerge as two of the past century’s most consequential corporate villains.

The oil-and-gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.”

This book is a clarion call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest industry on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of predatory oil executives and their enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”

Blowout
Rachel Maddow
Crown
Published Oct 01, 2019
Hardcover $30.00
ISBN 9780525575474

Threads of Life by Claire Hunter

"Sewing has a visual language. It has a voice. It has been used by people to communicate something of themselves--their history, beliefs, prayers and protests."~ from Threads of Life by Claire Hunter

Twenty-eight years ago I made my first quilt and it changed my life. As I honed my skills I was inspired by historic and traditional quilts but also by art quilts.

Early on I dreamed of being able to make quilts that represented my values, interests, and views. I eagerly learned new skills, from hand embroidery and hand quilting to surface design, machine thread work, and fusible applique. I have been making a series of quilts on authors I love. I have created a Pride and Prejudice storybook quilt, an Apollo 11 quilt, and embroidered quilts of the First Ladies, Green Heros, and women abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders.

With my quilt I Will Life My Voice Like A Trumpet,
2013 AQS Grand Rapids quilt show

I was excited to be given an egalley of Claire Hunter's book Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle. 

Hunter identifies themes in needlecraft including power, frailty, captivity, identity, connection, protest, loss, community, and voice. She shares a breathtaking number of stories that span history and from across the world.

Hunter begins with the history of the Bayeux Tapestry, a panel of wool embroidery showing scenes from the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Its history illustrates the ups and downs in cultural attitudes toward needlework.

detail from Bayeux Tapestry 

It was forgotten, nearly upcycled, and used for a carnival float backdrop. Napoleon put it in a museum until it fell out of fashion and was again relegated to storage here and there. Himmler got a hold of it during WWII and publicized the artifact and saved it from destruction. Then the French Resistance took possession of the Louvre and the tapestry.

900 years later, the tapestry attracts thousands of viewers every year, a worldwide cultural icon, and inspired The Games of Thrones Tapestry.

Yet, we don't know who designed the tapestry or embroidered it, the challenges and tragedies they faced. They remain anonymous.

I was familiar with the Changi prison camp quilts created during WWII by women POWs in Japanese camps. Hunter explains how the women created images with personal and political meaning to tell loved ones they survived.

quilt made in the Changi Prison Camp

I have seen Mola reverse applique but did not know it was an invention of necessity. Spanish colonists in Panama and Columbia insisted the indigenous women cover their chests. Traditionally, the women sported tattoos with spiritual symbols which they transferred to fabric. In many cultures, cloth has a spiritual element.

Mola Blouse, c. 1990, from the International Quilt Museum

Hunter also touches on Harriet Power's Bible Quilt, Gees Bend quilters, the Glasgow School of Art Department of Needlework, and Suffragists banners.

There was much that was new to me. How  Ukrainian embroidery was forbidden under Soviet rule as they systematically dismantled cultural traditions. Or how the Nazis used Jewish slave labor to sew German uniforms and luxury clothing.

Hunter tells stories from history and also how needle and thread are employed today as therapy and as community engagement and to voice political and feminist statements. She tells the memorable story of guiding male prisoners in the making of curtains for a common room and how she worked with groups, Austrian Aboriginies and Gaelic women, to make banners addressing displacement and community disruption.

We also read about the history of sewing, the impact of industrialization and the rise of factory production, the home sewing machine, the shift from skilled craft to homemade decorative arts.

Art quilters and textile artists like Faith Ringgold and Judy Chicago are discussed.

Social awareness needlework included the quite well known Aids Quilt but also the little known banner The Ribbon, created to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Justine Merritt organized the sewing of peace panels to be stitched together. 25,000 panels were made. 20,000 people collected on August 4, 1985, to wrap the 15-mile long Ribbon around the Pentagon, the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the Lincoln Memorial, and to the Capital and back to the Pentagon. The media and President Reagen ignored it.

Threads of Life may seem an unusual book, a niche book, but I do think it has a wide appeal that will interest many readers.

I was given access to a free egalley through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle
by Clare Hunter
ABRAMS
Pub Date 01 Oct 2019
ISBN 9781419739538
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard 

In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. 

Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story. 

Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

"What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have--staying alive." ~from Cilka's Journey

In 1974 when I was twenty-two I met a woman who had come from Russia after World War II. I was new in town and not even half her age. In the morning when she saw my husband had left for work she would run across the street to my door. She asked why I did not have children yet, whispering that I should ask my husband--he'll know what to do. And she puzzled over my husband's job as an assistant pastor, asking "why two priests?"

One day, in broken English, Nadya told me that when she was a teenager she volunteered to go to a German work farm in her father's stead. She told me she never could have children and thought that she had been sterilized at that camp. When the war ended she was given the choice of three places to go and she chose New Jersey in America. On the ship, she met a man who had also been in a camp and had no family left and they married. She could not read English or drive. I am now surprised she even told me this much of her story.

I was ignorant of the details of modern history at that time. I knew about Nazi Germany and the concentration camps from books I had read such as Anne Frank's Diary. Still, I had little appreciation of the horror Nadya had endured. I later realized that Nadya was perhaps was Polish or from another country taken over by the Nazis and not Russian. That the work farm was a prison camp. That she had no family or home to return to after the war.

We are surrounded by people with stories that they keep to themselves for many reasons. Sometimes because the stories are too painful to speak. Perhaps they don't have the words to express their experience. Sometimes people fear that their past will bring judgment from those who weren't there.

When Heather Morris talked with Lale Sokolov, listening to his story that would become her best-selling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, he told her that Cilka Klein saved his life. Morris knew she had to learn about Cilka and write her story. How did this teenager survive years in prison camps? Not only survive but have the strength to help others survive?

The people Morris interviewed gave conflicting stories about Cilka's character. She was a collaborator. She slept with the Nazis for favors. She helped them, saved them, sacrificed for others. Which was the real Cilka?

Cilka was only sixteen in 1942 when the Nazis rounded up Slovakian Jews and she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was young and beautiful and soon slated to become a sex slave.

At the end of WWII, Russia rounded up people they feared had collaborated or spied for the Nazis and sent them to Siberia. Cilka had 'slept with the enemy' and knew several languages. Deemed an enemy of the state, she was sent to a prisoner camp near the Arctic Circle where mistreated prisoners mined coal by hand.

In Cilka's Journey, Morris recreates life in the Gulag interspersed with flashbacks revealing Celia's life before and during WWII. The book is filled with memorable characters, women who have lost everything and yet strive for a sense of order, community, and even beauty. They bond over the hope represented by a baby and forgive each other's frailties.

"History never gives up its secrets easily," Morris writes, but Cilka's story needed to be told. It is the story of a girl cast into the unimaginable, not once but twice in her young life. And it is the story of courage, the pragmatism needed to survive, the shame of survivor's guilt, and the empathy that spurs personal sacrifices to help another.

Lale never forgot Cilka. Thanks to Morris, neither will we.

I received an ARC through Bookish First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Cilka's Journey
by Heather Morris
St. Martin's Press
$27.99 hardcover
Publication Date: Oct 01 2019
ISBN: 9781250265708