Publishers Weekly
01/16/2023
Rosner (The Yellow Bird Sings) delivers an engrossing story inspired by the postwar lives of Jewish children who were hidden during the war. Seven-year-old Roger spent most of the war growing up in safety at the Convent of Sainte Marie de Sion, but in 1946, the church insists on keeping him, prompting Roger’s aunt to sue for custody. A parallel narrative follows siblings Ana and Oskar, whose parents send them to the Polish countryside. Near the war’s end, they’re taken by a Jewish woman reclaiming Jewish children to live in Israel, which excites Ana but upsets the younger Oskar, who’s grown attached to their foster parents. Twenty years later, Roger, now a professor in Israel, meets Renata, a British archeologist. They’re drawn to each another, but their romance is derailed when Renata reveals her parents were German. Ana, meanwhile, lives in a kibbutz with her husband, who wants to raise their children there, but Ana would rather leave the community; while Oskar falls in love with a talented violinist. When the siblings learn their foster mother is ill, they consider returning to Poland, and surprising revelations about Renata’s past explain why her family left Germany during the war. Rosner wrings a great deal of emotion from the various portraits, and she does an admirable job of exploring the characters’ conflicted loyalties. Fans of Jewish historical fiction will be moved. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
National Jewish Book Award Finalist · Jewish Fiction Award Honor Book
"Rosner’s project in Once We Were Home transcends even her abundant storytelling gifts. Over time, Rosner’s characters find themselves at the vortex of complex legal, moral, and philosophical questions."
—The Boston Globe
“Compelling…A thought-provoking, moving tale…The bulk of Holocaust literature tends to focus on Nazism and concentration camp experiences, and understandably so. Rosner’s novel, however, pushes the boundaries of such literature, exploring some of the longer-term consequences that survivors and their families faced.”
—Jewish Book Council
“Rosner’s novel reflects personal interviews and in-depth research...She illuminates the complex and opposing political and religious viewpoints...Rosner’s heart-wrenching revelations in Once We Were Home will persist in readers’ minds for seasons to come.”
—Historical Novel Society
“Rosner’s tender prose unearths the depth and complexity of family, love, religion, identity, memory and home.”
—Hadassah Magazine
“Well done, both moving and thought provoking. The author offers no simple answers because there are none. What she does do is provide an excellent look at the way World War II affected adults and children decades after it ended.”
—The Jewish Federation of Greater Binghamton’s The Reporter
“Necessary…To trace in alternating chapters the growing perceptions of four separate characters requires agility, balance, and the ability both to keep the stories distinct and then to weave them together seamlessly. It’s no easy task, yet Rosner accomplishes it handily. The novel’s language is clean and lyrical, never overwrought; it tells each story with tenderness and restraint.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
"A tense and heartfelt story...An emotional topic that showcases the devastating results of war where often, even when everyone wants and deserves the best, nobody truly wins."
—BookTrib.
“[A] moving story about identity, family, and the meaning of home…An excellent addition to historical fiction collections.”
—Library Journal
“An excellent choice for book clubs…Gives readers much to ponder.”
—BookPage
“[A] complex tale about fear, survival, and what it means to be a family."
—Booklist
“A carefully crafted and heartbreaking book.”
—Kirkus
“An engrossing story inspired by the postwar lives of Jewish children who were hidden during the war. Fans of Jewish historical fiction will be moved.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Poignant, moving, and unforgettable...Rosner is one of my favorite authors, and she writes with the pen and heart of a poet. Rosner enlightens us about a little-known but vital part of world history, and at the same time uplifts us with how this foursome grows to adulthood, claims their identity, and finds love and family of their own.”
—Lisa Scottoline, #1 bestselling author of What Happened to the Bennetts and Eternal
"Once We Were Home is the rarest literary bird: breathlessly tense and gorgeously lyrical at the same time (that sweet spot most authors can only dream of!). Rosner immerses her reader in a world full of loss, longing, and mystery, and all the while her ear is tuned to the music of language. I'm in awe of this beautiful novel."
—Lauren Fox, New York Times bestselling author of Send For Me
“Lush, transportive, and heartbreaking. The poetic Rosner is a gifted storyteller, and here, she asks us to consider the true meaning of home and family in a world turned upside down. Astonishing in both its detail and its lyricism, and thrilling in its scope, Once We Were Home soars.”
—Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars
“Once We Were Home is a tour-de-force. With delicacy and empathy, Rosner examines the aftermath of war on four displaced children. A timely read, searing and utterly unforgettable.
—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code
“A spell-binding tapestry, with countless twists, turns, and stunning revelations along the way. Rosner’s ability to conjure the hearts and minds of these children is nothing short of miraculous; it’s impossible not to fall in love with them, and even harder to let them go at the end of the book.”
—Helen Fremont, national bestselling author of The Escape Artist
“Rarely have I read such subtle and precise prose, and rarely have I been more moved. One turns the final page with tears of happiness and satisfaction, but above all, with a new appreciation for our unknowable connections, our shared humanity, and our universal desire for home.”
—Natalie Jenner, internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls
"Under Rosner's talented pen, simple prose turns into poetry and ordinary stories become complex, poignant. I found this forgotten history of displaced WWII children and the return to their roots captivating, thought-provoking, enlightening, and bittersweet."
—Alka Joshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur and The Perfumist of Paris
“Utterly gorgeous! This lyrical story of lives in the aftermath of war and displacement breaks our hearts, and mends them back into a stronger love.”
—Meg Waite Clayton, internationally bestselling author of The Postmistress of Paris and The Last Train to London
"Rosner's new novel is about the ways we seek family despite the wounds we carry. The stories of her characters fit beautifully together like nesting boxes, building to become an ode to love in its many forms. A brave and ultimately life-affirming book."
—Jai Chakrabarti, National Jewish Book Award winning author of A Play for the End of the World
Library Journal
12/01/2022
Rosner's (The Yellow Bird Sings) moving story about identity, family, and the meaning of home explores the little-known story of the stolen children of World War II. Jewish parents fleeing the Nazis gave their children to non-Jewish families or hid them in convents or monasteries. Once the war was over, those who survived searched for their children, but the Catholic church had them baptized and refused to return them so that they could save their souls. Since most of the hidden children were very young, the families that hid them were the only families that they knew. Ana and Oskar lived on a farm in Poland where they tended livestock and grew herbs. Roger was in a French monastery. A gifted student, he sometimes got in trouble for questioning his teachers. Renata, originally from Germany, escaped with her mother and went to England. After the war, a Zionist organization brings Ana, Oscar, and Roger to Israel. They are unhappy about leaving the only homes that they knew, but they discover family on a kibbutz. Renata becomes an archaeologist and goes on a dig in Jerusalem. VERDICT Readers familiar with The Yellow Bird Sings will learn more about the characters in that book here. An excellent addition to historical fiction collections.—Barbara M. Bibel
Kirkus Reviews
2022-12-24
During World War II, Jewish children are given to Catholics to raise by parents desperate to save them from the Nazi killing machine.
The book opens with Roger, a French Jewish boy hidden in the Convent of Sainte Marie de Sion. It’s 1946, and he remembers his baptism and forced Catholic religious training, even as he knows he’s Jewish. A second story begins in 1942 when Mira Kowalski and her infant brother, Daniel, are hastily cleaned up by their mother and taken to live with a childless couple in the Polish countryside. Mira is renamed Anastzja Wójcik and her brother, Oskar. These children, too, are converted to Catholicism and steeped in the church. As they spend their formative years in hiding, memories of Jewish homes and rituals and parents fade, and in Oskar’s case, are never formed. All are orphaned by Nazi violence. At war’s end the protectors of all three children want to keep them, but Jewish activists successfully claim them as their own. Who is stealing whom? The children's storylines converge in Israel in the late 1940s and carry through to 1968, becoming interwoven with that of Renata, a British/German archaeologist with her own hidden, traumatic past. The characters mature and find careers and love but remain deeply unsettled by their mixed pasts. What is Roger’s faith tradition? How does Oskar reconcile himself to being ripped from the only parents he remembers? And what about the grief of the Polish couple whose charges are forcibly resettled in Israel? “What is a mother if not a nesting box?” asks a character toward the book’s conclusion. Oskar finally reconnects with the only parents he remembers, and new surprises about parentage continue through to the end.
A carefully crafted and heartbreaking book.
