That Year of Our War

3.7/5 ( ratings)

In the tradition of Chaim Potok's The Chosen and Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, That Year of Our War is a gentle, warmly nostalgic story by prizewinning author Gloria Goldreich about the final year of World War II and its profound consequences for a young woman and her extended family. For Sharon Grossberg, 1944 was a year of death and a year of birth. It began with D-Day, which for her would always mean "Death-Day," the day Sharon's mother died after a painful battle with leukemia. With Sharon's father in Europe serving as an army doctor, she is left in the care of her passionate, strong-willed aunts and uncles. Caught up in the varied currents of their lives, Sharon discovers the secrets of their marriages and is herself initiated into the mysteries of love and betrayal. There is Lottie, the eldest aunt and matriarch to whom they all turn first, and her husband, Julius, a wealthy furrier; Edna, the organizer and manager of the family, one of those women who know at once whom to call and what to do in every circumstance; and beautiful Dina, a social worker, and her husband, Robert, a Socialist artist. Transplanted from her Brookline, Massachusetts, home, Sharon spends the summer in Woodstock, New York, with her aunt Dina and uncle Robert. There Sharon experiences adult love for the first time and learns to accept the inevitable uncertainties one must face in life. It is a year during which birth and death converge, hope triumphs over despair, and the national tragedy of world war and the yearning for peace dominate thought and dream. Written with exquisite grace and subtlety, That Year of Our War is the compelling story of one family's loving and tenacious commitment to one another during those crucial months when love and loss, anxiety and exhilaration, hung in tense balance.