In My Mother's House — Margaret McMullan

"Graceful . . . The global catastrophe of the Nazi era we know about. It is the individual, private pain it caused that is skillfully given voice here." -- The Boston Globe

In My Mother's House is a beautiful, haunting, and elegantly crafted novel about a daughter's obsession to understand her mother's staunch commitment to silence about their family's experiences during World War II Vienna -- and how they were able to escape.

Told in the alternating voices of Elizabeth and her mother Jenny, the story is remarkable for its fullness and rich details: the pieces of family silver the grandmother mails to the family, piece by piece, over the years; Jenny's war-time memories of her uncle's viola d'amore lessons; the fragrant smell of the wood floors at the Hofzeile, the family's longstanding yellow home in Vienna.

As Elizabeth begins to fill the gaps of Jenny's troubled memory, she stumbles upon a family secret that ultimately reveals how it is that we inherit the things we do, from one generation to the next.

"The two narrative threads blend into one harmonious story, proving that while we can leave a country, we can't escape our history." -- Entertainment Weekly

"Exquisite. I salute Margaret McMullan's elegantly crafted prose, her beautiful restraint, her emotional honesty, and her storytelling power." -- Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body