Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History

Helen Epstein's compassionate tribute to her family, "Where She Came From," combines a moving ancestral history with the scrupulously researched fate of Eastern European Jews. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Epstein began her project after her mother's death, with only the stories of her family to guide her. For a period of over twelve years, the author traveled to Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Israel, and like an archaeologist with shards of data, pieced together her story of three generations of women. Through the traditional women's art of sewing, Epstein symbolically traces the lives of these women, affirming that "we think back through our mothers if we are women."