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Becoming Sarah: A Novel
For fans of Claire Messud and Téa Obreht, a debut novel that examines how the Holocaust shapes the life of one tough survivor and the toll it takes on her daughters and granddaughters.
Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?
Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.
Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.
Can you call yourself a Survivor if you don’t know what you survived?
Take Sarah Vogel. Auschwitz is her hometown, yet she has no memory of the place. Not the obscene conditions of her birth, the mother, or the changing cast of faceless women who kept her warm on winter nights. She’s only three when liberated, and with no one to tell her who she is or what she might become, Sarah has no choice but to invent herself. On her journey from Europe, land of the defeated, to America, land of the self-invented, she learns that holes in a person’s past are red flags and that little white lies go down easier than explanations. But eventually those lies will become the wall that hides her true self, the good and the bad, from those she loves.
Becoming Sarah is the poignant, sometimes ruthless portrait of an American family—its matriarch, a tough old bird who should never have drawn breath but is bent on lasting forever—and the line of daughters and granddaughters who follow. Each generation standing on the shoulders of the last; each gaining more of the strength, will, and maybe even luck that will make them Survivors in their own right.
360 pages, Paperback
Published October 28, 2025
7 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 13, 2025
Sarah is born inside Auschwitz, miraculously survives, is liberated at age three, and after years of struggling to survive in various European locations, she finally makes it to America. It's a compelling multi-generational saga that I consumed in three sittings. Botnick is a gorgeous writer and every sentence is beautiful. So beautifully written that sometimes I reread a sentence or paragraph over and over just to appreciate her mastery with the English language.
In this dark time in our nation's history, when some many stories we hear about immigrants are negative, and intentionally so, the character of Sarah is a reminder of the extraordinary struggles people will make to come to the USA. And the extraordinary contributions so many of them make.
This is an immigrant story like you've never read before and once you've read it, you will never forget Sarah or the lives she touches along the way.
One of the finest novels I've read in decades.
In this dark time in our nation's history, when some many stories we hear about immigrants are negative, and intentionally so, the character of Sarah is a reminder of the extraordinary struggles people will make to come to the USA. And the extraordinary contributions so many of them make.
This is an immigrant story like you've never read before and once you've read it, you will never forget Sarah or the lives she touches along the way.
One of the finest novels I've read in decades.
October 15, 2025
Sarah was born in Auschwitz, but never really recorded by anyone as having been there. She then managed to slip through various other cracks to wind up a peculiar sort of outlier, a survivor in many senses of the word, and a matriarch whose stubbornness and personality serve as a foundation for the lives of her whole family. This was a great novel about family and identity, and what it means to have survived something like the Holocaust, both for the survivor and for everyone else. This book also dips a toe into a near future, which was interesting and a bit different.
August 20, 2025
“Some things need remembering…but everything else is served up in dreams, events harvested from life, whether they happened or not.”
A true story: My childhood friend had a grandfather named David. David, living in Germany during his teenage years, boarded one of the last planes to England by unlocking his suitcase filled with family heirloom silver then sprinting for his life saving transport to safety. Would the armed soldiers shoot him? He spent the war in England, an unexploded incendiary device in his courtyard. An illustrious career followed in the United States, however, his entire family died in Auschwitz. His progeny…children, grandchildren, witnessed a resilient and determined patriarch with his trauma buried within.
Becoming Sarah is a composite of experiences of Holocaust survivors. Birthplace: Auschwitz, Birthdate: Winter,1942, Mother: Unknown. “When that first nurturing soul disappeared, another stepped in…a baby took up little room and gave off much heat, there was a queue of women. That the guards never learned of this baby’s existence…a miracle.” With the three year old strapped to her chest, an emaciated woman slipped through another camp’s gates…undetected.
Liberation,1947. The now incorrigible five year old was taken to a Displaced Person’s Camp in Bergen-Belsen having “no connection to the world beyond their gates.” A family in the neighboring town of Celle gave Sarah “a name, a home, a seat at the family table” and taught her to read German. She did not understand that she was “Juden”. She claimed she was “Auschwitz”. A so-called family friend promised 15 year old Sarah education and security …a fabrication. In 1961, when Germany was divided, Berlin became her destination. She hooked-up with a Soviet soldier who had a bold plan Why not “repatriate” to Israel by getting a tattoo with the numbers written on the scrap of paper she carried in her valise. With the eventual support of the Jewish Immigrant Resettlement Program, she chose the United States instead. She’d heard rumors that America was the birthplace of miracles…(She) could become something from nothing.”
Trauma ridden and at a loss, she created an identity using white lies. Who was Sarah? What was her nationality? Initially raised Christian in Celle, she did not know anything about being Jewish. Adjustments to her memorized profile were needed. After spending three comforting days in the arms of a Russian soldier, she soon discovered she was carrying his child. Before leaving for America, she gave birth to a daughter, Sasha. Sarah’s trauma permeated her relationship with each of her daughters in turn: Sasha, Malcah and Ruth. Ruthie was named for a woman in a grainy photo, the woman assumed to be Sarah’s mother.
Sarah was devoid of feeling, emotionally empty. In the name of self preservation, her protective shell helped her deal with everyday life as well as tragic events that unfolded over her lifetime. She was one tough cookie determined to navigate the world using her cobbled together past. Perhaps the upcoming plans for a gathering of the remaining Holocaust survivors would enable her to finally share her truth with her granddaughter, Moll.
Highly recommended.
Thank you Caitlin Hamilton for She Writes Press for a Print ARC in exchange for an honest review.
A true story: My childhood friend had a grandfather named David. David, living in Germany during his teenage years, boarded one of the last planes to England by unlocking his suitcase filled with family heirloom silver then sprinting for his life saving transport to safety. Would the armed soldiers shoot him? He spent the war in England, an unexploded incendiary device in his courtyard. An illustrious career followed in the United States, however, his entire family died in Auschwitz. His progeny…children, grandchildren, witnessed a resilient and determined patriarch with his trauma buried within.
Becoming Sarah is a composite of experiences of Holocaust survivors. Birthplace: Auschwitz, Birthdate: Winter,1942, Mother: Unknown. “When that first nurturing soul disappeared, another stepped in…a baby took up little room and gave off much heat, there was a queue of women. That the guards never learned of this baby’s existence…a miracle.” With the three year old strapped to her chest, an emaciated woman slipped through another camp’s gates…undetected.
Liberation,1947. The now incorrigible five year old was taken to a Displaced Person’s Camp in Bergen-Belsen having “no connection to the world beyond their gates.” A family in the neighboring town of Celle gave Sarah “a name, a home, a seat at the family table” and taught her to read German. She did not understand that she was “Juden”. She claimed she was “Auschwitz”. A so-called family friend promised 15 year old Sarah education and security …a fabrication. In 1961, when Germany was divided, Berlin became her destination. She hooked-up with a Soviet soldier who had a bold plan Why not “repatriate” to Israel by getting a tattoo with the numbers written on the scrap of paper she carried in her valise. With the eventual support of the Jewish Immigrant Resettlement Program, she chose the United States instead. She’d heard rumors that America was the birthplace of miracles…(She) could become something from nothing.”
Trauma ridden and at a loss, she created an identity using white lies. Who was Sarah? What was her nationality? Initially raised Christian in Celle, she did not know anything about being Jewish. Adjustments to her memorized profile were needed. After spending three comforting days in the arms of a Russian soldier, she soon discovered she was carrying his child. Before leaving for America, she gave birth to a daughter, Sasha. Sarah’s trauma permeated her relationship with each of her daughters in turn: Sasha, Malcah and Ruth. Ruthie was named for a woman in a grainy photo, the woman assumed to be Sarah’s mother.
Sarah was devoid of feeling, emotionally empty. In the name of self preservation, her protective shell helped her deal with everyday life as well as tragic events that unfolded over her lifetime. She was one tough cookie determined to navigate the world using her cobbled together past. Perhaps the upcoming plans for a gathering of the remaining Holocaust survivors would enable her to finally share her truth with her granddaughter, Moll.
Highly recommended.
Thank you Caitlin Hamilton for She Writes Press for a Print ARC in exchange for an honest review.
September 25, 2025
How do you connect to a character who is closed off, closed down? Who does not know her name, her heritage, even when she was born? Who lives her life on her own terms. Who is difficult to love, who drives away her daughter, who allows lies to gather around her while hiding the truth?Yet at the end of the novel I felt a profound sadness, and a somber respect for Sarah.
Diane Botnick shares that of 3,000 babies born in Auschwitz, thirty survived. Her novel imagines the life of one of those survivors, an infant kept alive by the sacrifice of the women internees. After liberation, the child was given to the care of a family where she survives, if not thrives. She makes a life, finds work, meets men and has daughters, and finally a granddaughter. Sarah hides the truth, telling her youngest daughter about an imagined, recalled mother.
A hundred years pass, and yet Sarah survives. Her granddaughter holds on to Sarah as an example of strength, but later learns that that what she believed about her grandmother was a story.
Those who loved Sarah had to believe in a story: that she survived the camp because she was strong. Sarah knows that strength had nothing to do with it. Her son-in-law thinks she is ‘damaged,’ because its easier to find reasons for why she is different than to accept her for who she is.
Each generation of women had to learn how to survive. Sarah rejects the idea of intergenerational trauma, and yet we see her drive away her first born girl, shut down after the tragic loss of her second daughter, emotionally separating from her youngest daughter.
The novel takes us into the future, to 2045, and the 100th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And finally, Sarah is ready to tell her granddaughter her story.
Sarah is a remarkable creation.
Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Summie Marketing and She Writes Press for a free book.
Diane Botnick shares that of 3,000 babies born in Auschwitz, thirty survived. Her novel imagines the life of one of those survivors, an infant kept alive by the sacrifice of the women internees. After liberation, the child was given to the care of a family where she survives, if not thrives. She makes a life, finds work, meets men and has daughters, and finally a granddaughter. Sarah hides the truth, telling her youngest daughter about an imagined, recalled mother.
A hundred years pass, and yet Sarah survives. Her granddaughter holds on to Sarah as an example of strength, but later learns that that what she believed about her grandmother was a story.
Those who loved Sarah had to believe in a story: that she survived the camp because she was strong. Sarah knows that strength had nothing to do with it. Her son-in-law thinks she is ‘damaged,’ because its easier to find reasons for why she is different than to accept her for who she is.
Each generation of women had to learn how to survive. Sarah rejects the idea of intergenerational trauma, and yet we see her drive away her first born girl, shut down after the tragic loss of her second daughter, emotionally separating from her youngest daughter.
The novel takes us into the future, to 2045, and the 100th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And finally, Sarah is ready to tell her granddaughter her story.
Sarah is a remarkable creation.
Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Summie Marketing and She Writes Press for a free book.
October 1, 2025
The story follows Sarah, a girl born in Auschwitz, who grows up amid the ruins of war and memory. From her survival as a baby in impossible conditions to her complicated relationships with families, lovers, and the ghosts of her past, the novel stretches across decades. It is a portrait of a life shaped by trauma yet driven by the relentless pull of love, survival, and identity. The book traces how one woman carries both the horror and the humor of her history, and how those who come after her must reckon with what remains.
Reading this book was not easy, and I don’t think it was meant to be. The writing felt raw and startlingly alive. Sometimes the prose slowed me down with its density, but I kept going because every page had something sharp and true. I loved how the author wasn’t afraid to mix beauty with ugliness. She gave me moments of dark humor right after scenes that tore at me. The characters were flawed, sometimes unlikeable, yet unforgettable. Sarah, especially, lingered in my head long after I closed the book.
There were also times I felt overwhelmed. The shifts between past and present, memory and dream, tested me as a reader. But maybe that was the point. Trauma doesn’t follow neat lines. The way Botnick wrote mirrored the chaos of living with scars you can’t see. And when I let myself stop fighting the structure, I found myself swept into it. I laughed in places I didn’t expect, and I cried in places I thought I wouldn’t.
I came away from Becoming Sarah feeling both heavy and strangely hopeful. This isn’t a typical Holocaust novel. It’s about the long aftershocks, the way history worms its way into kitchens, bedrooms, and even jokes. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to feel a story as much as read it, especially those who care about how the past seeps into family, motherhood, and love.
Reading this book was not easy, and I don’t think it was meant to be. The writing felt raw and startlingly alive. Sometimes the prose slowed me down with its density, but I kept going because every page had something sharp and true. I loved how the author wasn’t afraid to mix beauty with ugliness. She gave me moments of dark humor right after scenes that tore at me. The characters were flawed, sometimes unlikeable, yet unforgettable. Sarah, especially, lingered in my head long after I closed the book.
There were also times I felt overwhelmed. The shifts between past and present, memory and dream, tested me as a reader. But maybe that was the point. Trauma doesn’t follow neat lines. The way Botnick wrote mirrored the chaos of living with scars you can’t see. And when I let myself stop fighting the structure, I found myself swept into it. I laughed in places I didn’t expect, and I cried in places I thought I wouldn’t.
I came away from Becoming Sarah feeling both heavy and strangely hopeful. This isn’t a typical Holocaust novel. It’s about the long aftershocks, the way history worms its way into kitchens, bedrooms, and even jokes. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to feel a story as much as read it, especially those who care about how the past seeps into family, motherhood, and love.
December 18, 2025
Dense and sprawling, we follow a child born in Auschwitz, miraculously saved but forced to invent a life. What she creates for herself and her children moves from fascinating to heartbreaking as the trauma and secrets filter down. Moments of great imagination, like when Sarah becomes "Jewish" by having a number tattooed on her arm. Also beautiful language: "For two days, the bells had been ringing through the streets like weeping widows..." This is not an easy read and it isn't the usual Holocaust story. That tragedy is over in the first few pages, but how it stains Sarah's life and the lives of her kids matters.
December 16, 2025
Born in the winter of 1942 in Auschwitz, Poland’s infamous concentration camp, Sarah somehow manages to survive. In 1945, she survives a Nazi death march, and throughout her childhood is shuttled to several places, never feeling at home anywhere. During a passing fling, she reinvents herself as an outwardly visible Holocaust survivor. She lives the rest of her life in America, where she passes on the burden of being a survivor to her daughters and granddaughters. This is a moving novel about identity, memory, and belonging. https://www.gpgottlieb.com/podcasts/b...
January 9, 2026
Very interesting book, not easy but well worth it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews