Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Klara’s Truth: A Novel by Susan Weissbach Friedman ’86.

September 6, 2024

Tags Alumni Book

Klara Lieberman is 49, single, a professor of archaeology at a small college in Maine — a contained person living a contained life. That was before she receives an unexpected letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, with the long-overdue news that her father is dead. What prompts her mother’s timing? The Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during World War II, and Bessie wants the money. Klara, on the other hand, wants answers about her father. She flies to Warsaw, determined to learn more.

Thus begins a journey — a story of family and heritage and self-discovery, of family ties and friendship, of second chances and healing told by Friedman, a psychotherapist with a specialty in women’s issues, family therapy, and trauma-focused therapy. This is her first novel.

As one reviewer aptly notes: “In this page-turning novel, Susan Weissbach Friedman integrates her experience as a trauma therapist with her gifts as a storyteller to share a beautiful story of healing and transformation. Klara’s personal journey is embedded seamlessly into a background that captures the traumatic impact of the Holocaust on Polish Jewish families. Friedman guides the reader back and forth from the depths of Klara’s wounded heart to the history of Poland beyond World War II, instilling hope in the reader that both the individual and the nation are capable of moving beyond a past of devastation toward a more optimistic future.”