In 1933, as antisemitism spreads across Europe, fifteen-year-old Berta leaves Czernowitz on a journey that will change her life forever.
Married to a man three times her age, Berta is forced to surrender childhood overnight, stepping into the role of wife before she has fully learned who she is. Marriage was meant to secure her future. Instead, it carries her across borders just as hostility toward Jews intensifies and the ground beneath her people begins to shift.
What was meant to be a quick and safe departure becomes a desperate migration as anti-Jewish persecution grows and escape routes narrow. By 1935, Berta and her husband Solomon are stranded in Istanbul, suspended between continents and consequences. Months pass in suffocating uncertainty. Promised departures collapse without explanation. Funds diminish. Friendships disappear into another ship's wake.
And within the confines of marriage, Berta begins to understand that protection does not always resemble love, and that survival may demand more maturity than she was ever meant to possess. When passage to Palestine is finally secured, relief does not come easily. She has learned how quickly certainty dissolves. Ahead lies open water and the fragile hope of safety.
Behind her, a Europe turning its back on Jews and closing its doors. Between those two realities stands a young woman who must decide which parts of herself she is willing to sacrifice to endure.
Set against the tightening grip of pre-war Europe, this sweeping and intimate second installment of the Bright One series traces Berta's forced coming of age amid exile, identity loss, and the quiet, often invisible costs of survival.
Praise
"This coming-of-age story of a young Jewish woman (the author’s grandmother) captures the heartbreak of leaving the past behind, while also showing her ability to overcome grief and form new friendships. At the same time, Berta continues to develop her education and self-worth as a young woman in a place and time that was not always kind to those in her position. It is a story of survival, friendship, loss, self-education, resilience, and budding independence."
~ Snap Dragon Lady, Amazon 5* Review
"Berta's story emerges against the darkening backdrop of prewar Europe, and Lisajoy Sachs grounds it in vivid historical detail while never losing sight of what Jewish families had to endure to survive."
~ Kit Sergeant, author of The Doctor of Auschwitz
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