My Father's Roses

by Nancy Kohner

Some families save and others throw away. The Kohners, a Jewish family living in Bohemia at the end of the nineteenth century, threw very little away. A hundred years later their casually assembled archive of over a thousand family letters, hundreds of photos, diaries and notebooks, pieces of verse, invoices, tickets and programmes, tells a unique story. Like most families, they are as concerned with their own affairs as with world events. Two parents, Heinrich and Valerie and their three children, Franz, Berta and Rudi, write to each other about what matters to them most - a compelling story of love and rivalry, arguments and reconciliations, business, money-making and home. As history overtakes them, their ordinary lives collide with extraordinary world events. In 1939, Hitler's invasion destroys the world in which they have lived and loved. Decades later, Rudi's daughter, Nancy Kohner, goes through the archive of letters and diaries and began to reflect on what it means to inherit such a story - words from a lost world. Captivated, amused and often surprised by what she uncovered, in My Father's Roses she revisited, with extraordinarily moving tenderness, her relationship with her father and, through him, a family she never knew.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

368 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2008

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping and a great read even if it hadn’t been about a great friends family. Mind blowing the depth of the family archive!

[Gary Knapton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book in the coffee house that became my morning run whistle stop for all of summer 2017. I'd read a bit, mark the page and put it back. 18 months on it's still there, surviving the interior facelift, so John gave me the book to take home. A northern English woman pieces together the life of her late Father who fled Czechoslovakia in the 1940's using a chest of old love letters and photos she was given in his last will & testament. It's very beautiful.

[Marshall Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting story of the search for roots.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing and unbelievable.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading this book for my book group it wasnt something that I got excited about. The introduction tells us the author died from cancer after a lifetime of research and never saw the book published. I wondered if this was just too personal to be of interest to anyone outside the family.
Nancy's father was youngest son Rudi although much of the letters are between eldest son Franz and his mother Valerie. From the time they are sent away to school in Prague to serving on the front line in WW1 you really get to know them all through a lifetime of letters. It brings alive the turbulence of WW2 and the movement of thousands of jerwish families against the contrasting happy times in Podersam.
Given the amount of preserved correspondence it was book that had to be written and one that must be read. It provides the reality of wartime in a way that no history book could ever do.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. The author and her daughter were very sincere and diligent and the family's story itself was very interesting. The problem is that because the book is basically limited to a set of letters between family members who were no longer living when the book was written, it ends up feeling too dry and scholarly. Because of the touching combination of family, love, and tragedy I can imagine this story being fantastic as a memoir (now impossible of course), a fictionalized novel, or even a movie, but as it is, too many of the emotions and thoughts are missing.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book about the journey of a daughter to learn of her father's family and what happened to them. Her grandmother died in the Holocaust but that is not the important part of the story. The relationships between family members and the daily events of their lives are very interesting. Unlike so many books it does not focus on the Holocaust but on the lives of the people involved.

[Zydny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written but there is a sense of overwhelming desperation behind the prose that is very distracting. It is a very personal book, and reading it gives one a sense of being an intruder.

Frankly, I failed to finish reading it. 50 pages in, I began skimming and went through to the end that way. I have already listed it for sale--perhaps someone else will enjoy it more than I have done.

[Windy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A non-fiction book written after Nancy inherits lots of letters and diaries from her father. The book covers her family's history through both world wars including the holocaust. Quite moving in parts but I felt it was written for the benefit of the author as a sort of catharsis rather than as an interesting document for readers.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book included many letters between families. It begins during WWI and the concerns they had during that time. It continues to WWII and the horrific life for Jews in Czechoslovakia. It was so sad to see a family have so much love yet experience so much pain. May we never forget the pain.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable. About the author's grandparents - German Jews from Czechoslovakia during early 1900s until mid WWII. Based on many letters in her possession. A well achieved insight into this family's lives.