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 calling: 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.
Praise for Klara’s Truth
An intelligent and nuanced story of reunion.
First-time author Susan Weissbach Friedman has created an intriguing, character-driven plot. Readers will appreciate the clarity with which the author describes the broken, overgrown jumble of Polish Jewish cemeteries — as well as the work people are doing today to refurbish and rebuild them.
Klara’s Truth is an ambitious and heartfelt novel about the ways in which our adult lives are shaped by the secrets of our past. From Maine to New York to modern-day Warsaw, Susan Weissbach Friedman brings readers on a journey of self-discovery, newfound family, and acceptance.
In her beautifully written and riveting debut novel, Friedman propelled me on a journey to post–WWII Poland where the ghosts of a once vibrant Jewish community haunted me. With great sensitivity, Friedman uses her experience as a social worker and therapist to show how a rejecting mother and hidden childhood sexual trauma froze Klara’s heart and left her fearful of close relationships. I rejoiced as Klara gradually finds purpose and love in this engrossing family saga that I could not put down.
Susan Weissbach Friedman has written a compelling story of family and heritage and self-discovery, of family ties and friendship and second chances, and has added a side of possible romance. She also gives us another perspective on how the sharp fingernails of war reach through generations and prick the skin decades after the guns stop firing. A great read!
In her empathetic and appealingly written debut novel, Susan Weissbach Friedman’s protagonist Klara, has been haunted by unresolved trauma and fragmented memories from her past which drives her to cautiously revisit them in hopes of finding resolution and authentic connection that have eluded her into adulthood. Friedman writes with both clarity and insight into how trauma impacts a life, and the importance of connection with the self and others in the healing process, as she captures this complex journey amidst a compelling historical and cultural setting.
In the tender novel Klara’s Truth, a daughter at a crossroads finds new resolve while learning about her family’s past.
In Klara’s Truth, themes of identity—personal, cultural, religious, and familial—are interwoven with echoes of intergenerational trauma. Klara finds her past . . . and herself. Thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end!
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 towards a more optimistic future.
As someone whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, I was eager to read Klara’s Truth to see if it was also my truth. It took only a few pages to see it does ring true. I think only a psychotherapist, like Friedman, could write a novel that so richly captures the intra- and interpersonal dynamics of families still seeking to heal from the Holocaust. Yet this is not a heavy read by any means—I gobbled it up in a few sittings, quickly drawn in by the beautiful love story.
Klara’s Truth is a beautiful story of discovery about a grown woman who is finally told the real circumstances of her father’s death. This revelation sends her on a journey to meet the family she never knew and discover even more previously unknown truths about her family’s history.