The Survivors, Adam Frankel
The Survivors, Adam Frankel
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The Survivors
A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing

Author: Adam Frankel

Narrator: Adam Frankel, Rob Shapiro

Unabridged: 8 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 10/29/2019


Synopsis

A memoir of family, the Holocaust, trauma, and identity, in which Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, must come to terms with the legacy of his family’s painful past and discover who he is in the wake of a life-changing revelation about his own origins.“The Survivors is an astonishingly beautiful and profoundly moving book.  Frankel’s haunting search to unravel the mysteries of his family is so compelling that it reads like a fine novel.” –Doris Kearns GoodwinAdam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines—a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is. In the midst of piecing together a story of inherited familial trauma, Adam discovered he was only half of who he thought he was, knowledge that raised essential questions of identity. Who was he, if not his father’s son? If not part of a rich heritage of writers and public servants? Does it matter? What defines a family’s bonds? What will he pass on to his own children? To rewrite his story in truth and to build a life for his own young family, Adam had to navigate his pain to find answers and a way forward.Throughout this journey into the past, his family’s psyche, and his own understanding of identity, Adam comes to realize that while the nature of our families’ traumas may vary, each of us is faced with the same choice. We can turn away from what we’ve inherited—or, we can confront it, in the hopes of moving on and stopping that trauma from inflicting pain on future generations. The stories Adam shares with us in The Survivors are about the ways the past can haunt our future, the resilience that can be found on the other side of trauma, and the good that can come from things that are unspeakably bad.

About Adam Frankel

Adam P. Frankel is an advisor to Emerson Collective, a social change organization. He was a speechwriter for President Barack Obama from the 2008 presidential campaign through Obama’s first term in the White House. Adam is a graduate of Princeton University and the London School of Economics, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nancy

This book is pretty raw and very well written. Adam Frankel’s book is divided into 3 parts; War, Inheritance, and Healing. Each division is a fascinating part of his history and, besides the specifics, the theory can be applied to all of us. His hypothesis is that trauma affects many generations. Th......more

I wanted to read this after hearing Adam Frankel on an episode of Family Secrets (Dani Shapiro's podcast). This book is split into three parts, yet still seemed disjointed. It was hard to remember in what order some things happened. I find it very hard to give a star rating to a memoir. Part of me w......more

I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins. Part family history, part memoir, this moving work of non-fiction details the stories of the author's maternal grandparents who survived the Holocaust to build new lives in Connecticut. Yet the scars inflicted upon his grandparent......more

Goodreads review by Laura

Frankel looks at the Holocaust experiences of his maternal grandparents - both were in camps during WWII and much of their immediate family was killed, and how that experience impacted the lives of their family through the following generations. I found the section about his grandparents' lives and......more