Lost Family

<p><strong><em>The Lost Family</em> is an extraordinary read the kind of book that makes you sob and smile the kind that gives you hope.... It is compassionate masterful and disturbingly contemporary.--Tatiana de Rosnay bestselling author of <em>Sarah's Key</em></strong></p><p>The <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Those Who Save Us</em> creates a vivid portrait of marriage family and the haunting grief of World War II in this emotionally charged beautifully rendered story that spans a generation from the 1960s to the 1980s.</p><p>In 1965 Manhattan patrons flock to Masha's to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin. With his movie-star good looks and tragic past Peter a survivor of Auschwitz is the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. He has resigned himself to a solitary life. Running Masha's consumes him as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife Masha--the restaurant's namesake--and two young daughters perished.</p><p>Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet an up-and-coming young model appears at the restaurant piercing Peter's guard. Though she is twenty years his junior the two begin a passionate whirlwind courtship. When June unexpectedly becomes pregnant Peter proposes believing that beginning a new family with the woman he loves will allow him to let go of the horror of the past. But over the next twenty years the indelible sadness of those memories will overshadow Peter June and their daughter Elsbeth transforming them in shocking heartbreaking and unexpected ways.</p><p>Jenna Blum artfully brings to the page a husband devastated by a grief he cannot name a frustrated wife struggling to compete with a ghost she cannot banish and a daughter sensitive to the pain of both her own family and another lost before she was born. Spanning three cinematic decades <em>The Lost Family</em> is a charming funny and elegantly bittersweet study of the repercussions of loss and love.</p>