Grace in the Wilderness: After the Liberation 1945-1948 by Aranka Siegal

Grace in the Wilderness: After the Liberation 1945-1948 Reviews

• 
  Rosie

  Okay. I gave this book one star and I wish I could give it like negative five or something. Seriously.
  
  I got this book out of the library on a whim - I mean hey, a biography, a Jewish teenage girl, AFTER the war? it looked good. But I was sorely disappointed . It was very harsh, and graphic, in its descriptions of what the Jews had to suffer in the camps, both hunger, sickness, and assault. Then even the girl's story, of going to school, and then living with a Swedish family, did not click with me. The girl is not an interesting character at all - she's very one dimensional, with hardly any explanation of her feelings or actions. Then there's the issue of her like seven and counting boyfriends. She gets uncomfortably intimate with several of them, but can't seem to satisfactorily sort out her actual feelings with each of them. It's very frustrating to read - even the ending doesn't seem right . . . she goes away to America, leaving behind the most persistent and deserving suitor, plus the wonderful Swedish family who have become all she cares about and I just really didn't like this book. Please, do yourself a favor and avoid this book.
• 
  Nikki

  Had I the option I would give this book 3.5 stars. I've rounded up as I believe that this real life story deserves the higher rating. I felt that the ending was too abrupt and that the editor should have teased out a little more information to wrap up the ends for the reader.
  I appreciate getting a closer look into the life of a Holocaust survivor's life after her liberation, what was required of her to adapt to her new surroundings, and what programs were provided for survivors in Sweden.
• 
  Carolyn Scarcella

  This is a holocaust story. This is a young adult book, and this is the last book I read for 2020. This story is about Hungary sisters. She tells a powerful, moving, graphic and takes a lot of courage and endurance ever I read, and I couldn’t put down in a day. This is another Piri was only 14 years old at the time. She was in a concentration camp with her sisters. It was a miracle they survived together as a result. Piri has mention a bit about the Frank girls when they were in Bergen-Belsen. I believe they all didn’t get along with the Frank sisters because Piri said Anne was not a very nice girl and they did know them at the Jewish school comparing to other two sisters Janny and Lien describes Anne a wonderful girl. Piri and her sisters emigrate to America as a result.
• 
  Leslie

  This sequel to UPON THE HEAD OF THE GOAT is more suited to mid-teens and older, as the Grace struggles with her maturity and developing sexuality in the years after the war. Although Grace struggles in ways that are unique to someone who has experienced the traumatic experience of war and holocaust, the story is really about growing up. It is well written and interesting, but for the reasons mentioned above, I would not offer it to child under the age of 14 or so.
• 
  Kelly

  The title makes little sense- not really in the wilderness, Grace could have a double meaning but there wasn't a character named Grace.
  An engaging tale of one teen girl's life after surving the Holocaust - the depiction of so many kind people- I hope the stories are based on truth. The messy ways people sought to put their lives back together after World War II after rang true.
  A truly bittersweet love story that had me fighting tears at the end.
  Another depiction of how humans can create family.
  Seeing this period of history through the eyes of a young survivor was fasciniating.
• 
  Tracey

  Sequel to "On the Head of the Goat" - a wonderful personal account of a teenage girl who, with her older sister, survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and resiliently moved on with her life, from one new place to another. It shows the remarkable human spirit when there is no "home" to go back to, and how a person relates to place. A precious story.
• 
  Susan

  Mostly this was a very interesting and new approach to a halocaust book, as it begins the day they are freed from the concentration camp, and covers three years of recovering. But the ending was so sudden and without closure that it caught me off guard. Huh.
• 
  Aden

  Really good.
• 
  Susannah

  Amazing, worth a read!
• 
  Lana Del Slay

  [sigh] I knew this had to be a true story, because pure fiction has neater endings and doesn't break my heart this way. Well-told, Madam Siegal. Well bloody told.
• 
  Andrea Morínigo Macen

  Great book! what about after the holocaust? This book pictures some of many kinds of struggles people who survived had to go through to belong again to this world.
• 
  Tyliah_PINK

  boring but informational
• 
  Barbara

  The story of Piri, a young survivor of a concentration camp, told from liberation to her sail to her new home.
• 
  Phillip

  The resiliency of individuals is amazing. Healing comes a day at a time, if a person is willing to confront their hurts and scars head-on. This book is a great companion read to the first book, Upon the Head of the Goat by the same author. Please read this true-story of a family surviving World War II, and all it involved.