A review by popthebutterfly
Klara's Truth: A Novel by Susan Weissbach Friedman

emotional informative medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

 
Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own. 

 

Book: Klara’s Truth 

 

Author: Susan Weissbach Friedman 

 

Book Series: Standalone 

 

Rating: 4.5/5 

 

Diversity: American Jewish MC, Polish Jewish characters 

 

Recommended For...: fiction book readers, historical fiction, WW2 

 

Publication Date: June 11, 2024 

 

Genre: Fiction 

 

Age Relevance: 17+ (parental death, war, genocide, postpartum depression, child neglect, romance, PTSD, slight language, pregnancy, miscarriage, PPD, child molestation, narcissism) 

 

Explanation of Above: Parental death and child molestation are mentioned in the book. There are scenes showing child neglect. War and genocide are mentioned. Postpartum depression and narcissism are shown in the book. There are scenes of PTSD episodes. There is some romance shown, but nothing is sexually shown. There is slight strong language in the book. Pregnancy and miscarriage are mentioned. 

 

Publisher: She Writes Press 

 

Pages: 280 

 

Synopsis: It is May 2014, and Dr. Klara Lieberman—forty-nine, single, professor of archaeology at a small liberal arts college in Maine, a contained person living a contained life—has just received a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, that will dramatically change her life. Her father, she learns—the man who has been absent from her life for the last forty-three years, and about whom she has long been desperate for information—is dead. Has been for many years, in fact, which Bessie clearly knew. But now the Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during WWII, and Bessie wants the money. Klara has little interest in the money—but she does want answers about her father. She flies to Warsaw, determined to learn more. In Poland, Klara begins to piece together her father’s, and her own, story. She also connects with extended family, begins a romantic relationship, and discovers her repairing the hundreds of forgotten, and mostly destroyed, pre-War Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Along the way, she becomes a more integrated, embodied, and interpersonally connected individual—one with the tools to make peace with her past and, for the first time in her life, build purposefully toward a bigger future. 

 

Review: I thought that this was a really interesting concept for a book. This book follows our main character whose name is Klara. When Klara was young, her father supposedly walked out on her and her mother and her mother is not that great of a mother, I can empathize. Klara's mother is really emotionally distant and by the time that this book starts, Klara is an older adult about to turn 50 and she is very low contact with her mother. Klara is an archaeologist and she teaches at a university, but she has not really explored her own culture. She is Jewish but she doesn't know or participate in a lot of the culture and she doesn't really know of her father's side of the family. That is until her mother tells her of a letter that has come from her father sister and that's when our main character seizes the opportunity to figure out more about herself. I did like that the book focused on an older main character who is still trying to figure herself out, that gives a lot of Hope to people like me in their mid-thirties who have no idea what we're doing in our lives. I also liked that the book was set in 2014 that it focused a lot on learning about the past. So for her it would have been learning a lot about Jewish culture but also what has happened in the aftermath of WW2 in regards to Jewish people. This book did only really focus on Poland so it didn't really expand on other countries and the book also focuses a lot on our main character's trauma, especially that of child molestation trauma that happened when she was younger. I thought the book was really good and the concept can really be taken to heart by a lot of people, especially those who are older and still don't know what they're doing in their life or they don't really know who they are as a person or about their family. It is never too late to go figure out what you are doing on this Earth. 
 
 The only thing that I would say was a downside to this book is that it felt like there were a lot of really slow paced moments and that the book was repetitive a bit, especially in the middle. 

 

Verdict: It was so good!