Unexploded Ordnance: What she felt. What they feared. How they survived. What they saw.

by Catharina Coenen

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Catharina Coenen’s Unexploded Ordnance is a probing and insightful portrait of how trauma takes shape in the body and persists across generations.

Which parts of my nervous system hold the fear of something that my grandmother, mother, aunt lived through? What came to me in my mother’s genes, her mitochondria, or in the way my grandmother’s hand might clutch my wrist? How do I comb these old afflictions from the tangled knot that is my present tense?

In unflinching, inventive, and deeply moving essays, Catharina Coenen interrogates how we are shaped by the stories and histories we inherit. After she had immigrated from Germany to the United States to pursue her career as a doctor of biology, Coenen began to untangle her experience from that of her grandmother and mother, both of whom lived through the second World War in Germany. With the precision and attentiveness of one performing a dissection, Coenen critically peels back generational silences and historical distortions to shed light on the terrors her family members both experienced and were implicated in. Weaving together reflections on language, science, memory, and her own coming to terms with her queerness after two decades of marriage to a man, Coenen moves fluidly between personal and political insights with stunning honesty and elegance.

Genres: Essays

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 28, 2025

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a unique memoir! The author blends her scientific knowledge as a biologist with her research into war-caused trauma to write a tender, loving memoir of her German family during the Hitler years. Her mother was a child who moved with her sister and mother from town to town, escaping the bombing, while her father served on the front. Through varied essays, she takes us to her own life in Pennsylvania and back "home" to her German family, where "unexploded ordnance" - bombs buried deep underground from the Second World War threaten explosion at any time, and when discovered, require widespread evacuation before careful detonation. This is a book to read slowly and thoughtfully. Skillfully setting stories of the past among scenes from the present reminded me how life is not a through line from A to B. The book is meticulously researched, with copious endnotes to expand on what has been written. It is evident the author is a skillful poet as well as a memoirist. I will be thinking about her stories for quite some time.

[Michael Doane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexploded Ordnance is a piercing, intellectually rigorous, and deeply moving collection of essays that examines how trauma embeds itself not only in memory, but in the body, language, and inherited silence.

Catharina Coenen approaches generational trauma with extraordinary precision, blending science, history, and personal reflection into a narrative that feels both intimate and expansive. Her interrogation of how fear travels through genes, gestures, nervous systems, and family stories invites the reader to consider trauma as something lived and transmitted, not merely remembered.

What makes this work especially powerful is Coenen’s refusal to simplify history or absolve complexity. As she examines her grandmother’s and mother’s experiences in World War II Germany, she confronts not only suffering but complicity, silence, and distortion. Her background as a biologist lends the essays a striking clarity, as each piece feels carefully dissected, examined, and laid bare.

Equally compelling is the way Coenen weaves reflections on queerness, migration, and identity into the broader historical narrative. The movement between the personal and political is seamless, marked by intellectual honesty and emotional restraint. Unexploded Ordnance is not an easy read but it is a necessary one, offering profound insight into how history continues to live within us.

This is a courageous, elegant, and unforgettable work that will resonate deeply with readers interested in trauma studies, immigrant narratives, and literary nonfiction that dares to ask difficult questions.

[Dalyn Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexploded Ordnance: What she felt. What they feared. How they survived. What they saw. by Catharina Coenen is a profoundly moving and intellectually rigorous exploration of generational trauma. Coenen interrogates how experiences of fear, suffering, and resilience are passed down, examining the physical, emotional, and psychological legacies inherited from her grandmother, mother, and broader family history. Her essays blend memoir, science, and historical inquiry with elegance and precision, creating an intimate yet universally resonant portrait of inherited trauma.

What makes this book particularly compelling is Coenen’s ability to weave personal narrative, scientific insight, and sociopolitical reflection seamlessly. Her reflections on queerness, immigration, and the legacies of World War II highlight the complex ways identity, memory, and history intersect. Unexploded Ordnance is unflinching, inventive, and deeply moving a work that challenges readers to reflect on the stories and histories we carry, consciously or unconsciously.

[David Carriere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexploded Ordnance is a profoundly moving and intellectually rigorous exploration of generational trauma, memory, and identity. Catharina Coenen’s essays are at once intimate and expansive, tracing how fear, resilience, and historical experiences are carried across generations. Her reflections on her grandmother’s and mother’s experiences during World War II in Germany, interwoven with her own life as an immigrant and scientist, provide a meticulous and emotionally resonant examination of inherited trauma.

The writing is inventive, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest. Coenen’s ability to weave together biology, memory, personal narrative, and social history offers readers both deep insight and emotional connection. The exploration of her coming to terms with queerness adds another layer of vulnerability and authenticity, making the work both timely and timeless.

Ideal for readers of memoir, essays, and works on trauma, identity, and historical memory, Unexploded Ordnance challenges and inspires reflection, leaving a lasting impression on the mind and heart.

[Tony Heck · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Although women were not explicitly included in Nazi antigay laws, some lesbian women did end up in concentration camps. Rather than the pink triangle gay men were made to wear on their chests, these women wore a black one, labeling them not as “gay” but as asozial or gemeinschaftsunfähig—“antisocial” or “incapable of living in community.” The collection of essays, Unexploded Ordnance, by Catharina Coenen, brings forth depth and humanity through the horrid experiences suffered under the Nazi regime. She explores a multitude of the regime’s effects with compelling emotional honesty, including the genetic ramifications that trauma instills on future generations. These essays serve as an appeal to face the past, acknowledge its painful truths, while coming to terms with the reality that the damage from war and persecution exists long after it’s deemed over. Coenen exposes through powerful reflections on the ways our family histories shape who we are, making this work both thought-provoking and deeply moving.

Though I am a board member of the nonprofit book publisher, I am voluntarily leaving this honest and impartial review.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book--lyrical, rigorously researched, richly imagined. Coenen had dinner what she says is the job of her generation of (non-Jewish) Germans, "not just to hear our parents' and grandparents' stories--their pain, their gaps, and their contradictions with what we might know as fact--but also to make a different art, a different set of words."

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-Fiction account of a German family's experience of WW II told from the women and children on the receiving end of Allied bombs. The author is unapologetic with the themes that war is hell all around, bringing generational suffering for all parties.

[L L · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were so many things that I loved about this book. Coenen writes with precision and conciseness-- no word is superfluous or poorly chosen. She brings the scenes and characters to life with vivid detail, and yet with enough left between the lines for the what is unsaid to speak as loudly as what is written-- appropriate for a book about trauma and silence.
The book wrestles with dealing with the trauma that Germans (and especially German women and children) suffered during World War II from the repeated bombings, the occupation by Allied forces (didn't know there were many cases of mass rape and pillage-- though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised).

There were several standout threads in the book-- a moving and intimate portrait of her aunt who cared for her mother during the war, and later suffered from mental illness; the German and English etymological reflections that precede each essay and suggest the content; the author's own relationship with her mother; the continued exploration of what it means to process trauma, to remember suffering and to tell stories when your nation was the guilty perpetrator.

Highly recommended: a moving memoir that looks back at how trauma imprints itself upon multiple generations, while raising questions that remain relevant today.