It’s Raining Books: Jumping Over Shadows by Annette Gendler (spotlight)

 

Jumping Over Shadows
written by Annette Gendler
published by expected publication April 2017, She Writes Press

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Target, Book Depository, Goodreads

About the book – from Goodreads: History was repeating itself when Annette Gendler fell in love with a Jewish man in Germany in 1985. Her Great-Aunt Resi had been married to a Jew in Czechoslovakia before World War II–a marriage that, while happy, created tremendous difficulties for the extended family once the Nazis took over their hometown in 1938, and ultimately did not survive the pressures of the time. Annette and Harry’s love, meanwhile, was the ultimate nightmare for Harry’s family of Holocaust survivors.
Weighed down by the burdens of their family histories, Annette and Harry kept their relationship secret for three years, until they could forge a path into the future and create a new life in Chicago. As time went on, however, Annette found a spiritual home in Judaism–a choice that paved the way toward acceptance by Harry’s family, and redemption for some of the wounds of her own family’s past.

 

 

About the author: I am a writer, photographer and blogger. I write literary nonfiction and focus on the photography of place. In 2014-15 I had the privilege of serving as writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois.

My memoir Jumping Over Shadows, the story of a German-Jewish love that overcame the baggage of the past, is forthcoming in spring 2017 from She Writes Press. One essay excerpted from the manuscript, ‘Thrown Out’ of the Family Home, was published in the Wall Street Journal; another, Giving Up Christmas, was published in Tablet Magazine.

My essays have appeared in many literary journals, and links can be found under Writing. I regularly write for the Washington Independent Review of Books and the Jewish Book Council. My photography has been featured in Bella Grace Magazine and is forthcoming in the November 2016 issue of Artful Blogging.

I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. After 15 years of working in consulting, I left the corporate world a few years ago. I teach memoir writing at StoryStudio Chicago and handle communications for my children’s former school. I live in Chicago with my husband and three children.

Find Ms. Gendler here: web, blog, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter