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Missing Lucile: Memories of the Grandmother I Never Knew
Even as a child, Suzanne Berne understood the source of her father’s terrible he’d lost his mother when he was a little boy. Decades later, with her father now elderly and ailing, she decides to try to uncover the woman who continues to haunt him.
Every family has a missing person, someone who died young or disappeared, leaving a legacy of loss. Aided by vintage photographs and a box of old keepsakes, Berne sets out to fill in her grandmother’s silhouette and along the way uncovers her own foothold in American history.
Lucile Berne, née Kroger, was a daughter of Bernard Henry Kroger, the archetypal American self-made man, who at twenty-three established what is today’s $76 billion grocery enterprise. From her turn-of-the-century Cincinnati childhood to her college years at Wellesley, her tenure as treasurer of her father’s huge company, her stint as a relief worker in devastated France, her marriage to a professional singer, and the elusive, unhappy wealthy young matron she became, Lucile both illustrates and contradicts her times.
In the process of creating this portrait, Berne discovers the function of family “to explain what is essentially inexplicable―how we came to be ourselves.”
Every family has a missing person, someone who died young or disappeared, leaving a legacy of loss. Aided by vintage photographs and a box of old keepsakes, Berne sets out to fill in her grandmother’s silhouette and along the way uncovers her own foothold in American history.
Lucile Berne, née Kroger, was a daughter of Bernard Henry Kroger, the archetypal American self-made man, who at twenty-three established what is today’s $76 billion grocery enterprise. From her turn-of-the-century Cincinnati childhood to her college years at Wellesley, her tenure as treasurer of her father’s huge company, her stint as a relief worker in devastated France, her marriage to a professional singer, and the elusive, unhappy wealthy young matron she became, Lucile both illustrates and contradicts her times.
In the process of creating this portrait, Berne discovers the function of family “to explain what is essentially inexplicable―how we came to be ourselves.”
296 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2010
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141 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
March 30, 2011
Missing Lucille was certainly the appropriate title for me. After my long slog through the almost 300 pages, I’m definitely missing Lucille.
The author (Lucille’s granddaughter) had only tiny shreds of biographical information and resorted to padding out the book with general historical facts and creating novelistic scenarios. I kept with it hoping that as Berne progressed through Lucille’s life she would have more information to go on and flesh out Lucille’s real story. It never happened. I feel like I wasted my time with this one. Very disappointing.
The author (Lucille’s granddaughter) had only tiny shreds of biographical information and resorted to padding out the book with general historical facts and creating novelistic scenarios. I kept with it hoping that as Berne progressed through Lucille’s life she would have more information to go on and flesh out Lucille’s real story. It never happened. I feel like I wasted my time with this one. Very disappointing.
June 3, 2011
How many of us have wondered about our mothers lives when it's too late? The author, Susanne Berne's father thinks his mother didn't love him. she died when he was 6 and was told she was gone. Lucile was one of the daughters of the grocer, Kroger. Her life is pieced together and it is a fascinating tale.
October 2, 2017
Technically, a memoir is defined as an individual’s accounts of remembrances: their memories, told through the lens of their own perception. Suzanne Berne took on a bigger challenge in writing Missing Lucile. She chose to write about a grandmother she never knew.
The result is a fascinating, Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing of history, where the author pieces together a life from physical fragments found in a fruitcake tin. She lists the items inside, among them a diary from Lucile’s first year at Wellesley in 1911, some letters written in French during her years spent in France as a relief worker, some negatives, some snapshots, a silver charm bracelet. The author refers to these as “snips of historical DNA.” They lead her on an exploration of the life of Lucile Kroger Berne, daughter of the founder of the Kroger Grocery store chain, a company valued in the millions still today.
Lucile was not only an enigma to the author, but to her father, since he lost his mom when he was only six years old. She died at 43 of stomach cancer, leaving behind a son who, it seemed, hardly knew her. This left her dad, she says, “in a perpetual state of melancholy.”
Family history is difficult to depict in a larger arena, one that might appeal to an audience beyond one’s own family. Berne’s memoir – and I think her work goes far beyond that definition – seeks to encompass a universal concept: how we define who we are, individuals set against a backdrop of history we cannot dictate or define.
Rich with photographs, suppositions, hypotheses, and “perhaps,” this book takes the art of memoir to a new level. Anyone who cherishes family, and history, will also cherish Missing Lucile.
The result is a fascinating, Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing of history, where the author pieces together a life from physical fragments found in a fruitcake tin. She lists the items inside, among them a diary from Lucile’s first year at Wellesley in 1911, some letters written in French during her years spent in France as a relief worker, some negatives, some snapshots, a silver charm bracelet. The author refers to these as “snips of historical DNA.” They lead her on an exploration of the life of Lucile Kroger Berne, daughter of the founder of the Kroger Grocery store chain, a company valued in the millions still today.
Lucile was not only an enigma to the author, but to her father, since he lost his mom when he was only six years old. She died at 43 of stomach cancer, leaving behind a son who, it seemed, hardly knew her. This left her dad, she says, “in a perpetual state of melancholy.”
Family history is difficult to depict in a larger arena, one that might appeal to an audience beyond one’s own family. Berne’s memoir – and I think her work goes far beyond that definition – seeks to encompass a universal concept: how we define who we are, individuals set against a backdrop of history we cannot dictate or define.
Rich with photographs, suppositions, hypotheses, and “perhaps,” this book takes the art of memoir to a new level. Anyone who cherishes family, and history, will also cherish Missing Lucile.
October 27, 2017
While this was a beautiful portrait of a "missing" woman, filled with what-ifs and supposes, like many biographies, its most interesting insights were the ones, both directly and indirectly, about the author. This is about her reconciliation with her father, trying to understand him as much as it is about her attempting to reconcile him with his departed mother. In this case, I believe this created a richer, more subtle memoir than a strict retelling of her father's life. It's well worth the read.
June 30, 2024
A great surprise
I checked this book out on a whim. I am usually a reader of sci-fi/fantasy books, but I enjoyed every second of this book! The author recreates the life of her grandmother in a beautiful and caring way. I love the notion of writing a biography about someone who is important to the writer if not to history at large. I would recommend this book to lovers of history, family, and extraordinary women who strive for more in life.
I checked this book out on a whim. I am usually a reader of sci-fi/fantasy books, but I enjoyed every second of this book! The author recreates the life of her grandmother in a beautiful and caring way. I love the notion of writing a biography about someone who is important to the writer if not to history at large. I would recommend this book to lovers of history, family, and extraordinary women who strive for more in life.
March 18, 2019
I was curious about the story of Lucile, whose father founded the company that later became the Kroger supermarket chain. Unfortunately though, I found her granddaughter's writing style a little too dry to hold my interest. Also seemed like the book had a lot of filler, since there was limited factual information available about Lucile herself.
January 13, 2020
Family
It's no surprise that families are complicated. I thoroughly enjoyed how Ms. Berne found her grandmother with dogged determination and left no stone unturned. Lucile had a complicated life and it was wonderful to read about.
It's no surprise that families are complicated. I thoroughly enjoyed how Ms. Berne found her grandmother with dogged determination and left no stone unturned. Lucile had a complicated life and it was wonderful to read about.
July 16, 2020
Loved it! Very thought provoking about how our family history impacts us and how our perspectives may limit us. The discoveries thoughout the book brought greater depth to the portrait of Lucille and added vibrant color and connection.
December 10, 2022
She writes beautifully. The point of the book is that her dad lost his mom, Lucile Kroger (of the grocery store family) at an early age and the author attempted to trace her life for him the best she could. So it was somewhat of little interest what she found but her style of writing is very nice.
September 22, 2018
I am not missing Lucille. I was so happy to finally finish this book. Parts of the story were interesting, but the entire book could have been finished in less than one hundred pages.
January 25, 2019
A little boy misses his mother all of his life.
June 15, 2012
An interesting example of writing a biography of a person about whom you really know very little... Berne wants to "find" her grandmother, Lucile Kroger (yes, the daughter of the main who started the grocery chain) so she can "give" him to her father who suffered the loss of his mom when he was very young and remembers very little about her. His main sense of his mother was that she never smiled and never seemed interested in her children. Berne does discover some old letters, photos and other memorabilia in various family members' attics, but some of it is very contradictory (she went to a boarding school in Washington DC, but they have no record of her attendance; oh, instead, she went to this other school in Cincinnatti -- but they have no record of her attendance either...). Berne hypothesizes from the letters and photos what MAY have been happening, and she has certainly researched the places and times to be able to make fairly educated guesses -- but really, the main word of the whole story is "perhaps..."
Lucile suffers from society's stance on women in those times. For example, when her brothers go off to war (WW 1), she is made her father's accountant and personal assistant, which she probably should have been all along, as she seems the sharpest of all 7 of the Kroger children. But as soon as "the boys" come back, she is sent home to arrange flowers and make sure that supper is on the table at precisely 6:30. (She herself doesn't cook, of course; there is staff for all that....) The best-described, best-documented sections are about Lucile's years at Wellesley College and then as a volunteer in France after the War with a Wellesley "reconstruction" crew. On her return, she's back to flower-arranging, alone with her father, her 3 sisters having married. She is near 30 when she finally marries, and it's not clear whether it was a love match or a grasping-at-straws-rather-than-be-the-old-maiden-aunt. She has 2 sons, but dies in her later 30's of an overdose of ether during a minor unspecified surgical procedure.
There is much in this book that engaged me, including the ruminations on the nature of biography and memory. From a "women's studies" viewpoint, it could be an assigned reading, but it also holds up very well just as a story, a family chronicle. I found the time period to be a plus, not to mention that most of it takes place either in Cincinnati or France, both places of interest to me. Actually, I fell in love with the picture on the cover of the book before I even noticed the title or read the flap to see what it was about!
Lucile suffers from society's stance on women in those times. For example, when her brothers go off to war (WW 1), she is made her father's accountant and personal assistant, which she probably should have been all along, as she seems the sharpest of all 7 of the Kroger children. But as soon as "the boys" come back, she is sent home to arrange flowers and make sure that supper is on the table at precisely 6:30. (She herself doesn't cook, of course; there is staff for all that....) The best-described, best-documented sections are about Lucile's years at Wellesley College and then as a volunteer in France after the War with a Wellesley "reconstruction" crew. On her return, she's back to flower-arranging, alone with her father, her 3 sisters having married. She is near 30 when she finally marries, and it's not clear whether it was a love match or a grasping-at-straws-rather-than-be-the-old-maiden-aunt. She has 2 sons, but dies in her later 30's of an overdose of ether during a minor unspecified surgical procedure.
There is much in this book that engaged me, including the ruminations on the nature of biography and memory. From a "women's studies" viewpoint, it could be an assigned reading, but it also holds up very well just as a story, a family chronicle. I found the time period to be a plus, not to mention that most of it takes place either in Cincinnati or France, both places of interest to me. Actually, I fell in love with the picture on the cover of the book before I even noticed the title or read the flap to see what it was about!
September 27, 2016
This is a memoir of a woman looking to learn more about the grandmother she never knew. It's not the addictingly engaging, can't-put-it-down kind of read. But I found Berne's journey really interesting and made me think about my own family. (I'm a little biased because I took a writing class from Berne, based on this book)
This is not a story of Lucile's life. There is very little known about Lucile (who died when Berne's father was young). This is the story of Berne's search for Lucile. Because she cannot find definite documentation for a lot of Lucile's life, Berne speculates on what it could have been like based on what other's wrote about their similar experiences (classmates, for example).
She acknowledges where she has deviated from known facts and even offers alternate possibilities from what she wants to believe about Lucile.
I recommend this read for anyone who has a family member you've never met but have often thought about and imagined a life for.
This is not a story of Lucile's life. There is very little known about Lucile (who died when Berne's father was young). This is the story of Berne's search for Lucile. Because she cannot find definite documentation for a lot of Lucile's life, Berne speculates on what it could have been like based on what other's wrote about their similar experiences (classmates, for example).
She acknowledges where she has deviated from known facts and even offers alternate possibilities from what she wants to believe about Lucile.
I recommend this read for anyone who has a family member you've never met but have often thought about and imagined a life for.
February 12, 2016
Suzanne Berne's grandmother died at the age of 42, when her father was only 6 years old. He spent his life describing her as someone who never smiled, and the early loss of his mother (and his memories, therefore) defined his (often angry and depressed) sense of self for much of his life. Suzanne attempts to fill in the pieces of Lucille's life using the few clues she has (some letters, some pictures, some mementos); and as she recreates Lucille, she helps her father redefine, and ultimately come to peace with, his story of his mother. Our recollections are made of many things, not the least of which are our emotional reactions. I have always been interested in the how the past informs today. Perhaps we can all look back at the seminal people and times that shaped us with different lenses, therein writing new stories to explain who we are today.
April 7, 2011
I am finding this book quite compelling from a genealogical perspective. Many times we only have bits and pieces available for reconstructing the lives of our ancestors, and Suzanne Berne has written a very interesting telling of her grandmother's life as she has been able to reconstruct it from a small family archive, family stories, a biography on her great grandfather, Bernard Henry "Barney" Kroger, and an attentive eye to detail either found or missing from the record.
Ms. Berne has certainly inspired me in the art of examining the missing clues to fill in gaps. I would highly recommend this book for the family historian...but it is a wonderful read for anyone who enjoys biographies or regional history.
Ms. Berne has certainly inspired me in the art of examining the missing clues to fill in gaps. I would highly recommend this book for the family historian...but it is a wonderful read for anyone who enjoys biographies or regional history.
April 21, 2016
This book was a daughter's gift to her father, to try to discover the mother he lost at a young age and never really knew. What she discovers is limited in both breadth and scope, and yet surprisingly the book itself caries both. It muses on what we can never really know about those who came before us, and how much that we do is based on our own interpretations and desires.
I found this an engrossing and enjoyable read.
I found this an engrossing and enjoyable read.
December 28, 2014
I love the idea of this book; Berne's attempt to piece together the life of the grandmother she never knew is fascinating. I do mean "piece together" because there's not much left behind about the woman who died when Berne's father was barely old enough to remember her. She has some interesting things to say about memory and family that I particularly enjoyed.
March 12, 2011
This was an amazing investigative bio of the author's grandmother. She started out knowing almost nothing about her, and uncovered a whole generation of highly educated, talented women for whom the doors of the world were mostly closed. Beautifully written.
January 12, 2012
I found this book on a bookshelf for local authors. I was amazed what a great job Suzanne Berne did with so little to go by. She really brings Lucile, her grandmother to life, when there was so little known about her. Amazing research and personal insight!
April 28, 2012
Well written and the author keeps you attention even if it isn't your family she's writing about. Great example for genealogists to read as they think about a creative way to share their discoveries with others.
Want to read
August 13, 2010Interesting sounding bio of Lucile Berne, the missing Kroger heiress. Due to be published October 2010.
May 8, 2011
I never did find Lucile. The book was way too full of conjecture. It ended up with very weak character and a lot of disjoinyed facts about the period.
August 5, 2011
Fascinating and beautifully written. I enjoyed every page.
November 25, 2014
loved this book... for a history buff this story was intertwined with historical events..
loved it sooo much that I had to reserve all her books from library
loved it sooo much that I had to reserve all her books from library
March 7, 2015
I liked the idea of a biography of a non-famous person, since everyone has a life story! I didn't love the book, but definitely found parts to be interesting and touching.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews